Trade in Education Service: China

This project is all about international education, due to a strong demand for Australian higher education from overseas market. China has retained in top position as a major 'sending country' to Australia. However, the role of China in international education is in transformation..from sending to receiving. Trade in higher education in China developed rapidly since China's adoption of its Open Door policy in 1979. The rise of a market-oriented economy has transformed China from an overwhelmingly agricultural economy towards a more industrialized and information-based economy that puts a premium on human capital (knowledge) development. The nation's overall strength is thus believed to depend significantly on the quality of its human resources. In the face of the great need to speed up the nation's economic growth and national development, China began to send students abroad to study in 1979. Since then, China has become the leading country in the enrollment of students in industrialized nations.



But China's higher education market has been opening itself up to the outside world as well. While many Chinese students are eager to apply to study in
foreign universities, education officials in China are vowing to provide higher quality services for a growing number of foreign students pursuing higher education in China. Statistics show that some 62,000 foreign students were enrolled in over 360 Chinese colleges and universities in 2002 (China Institute of International Education Report, 2002)．In addition, according to a rough estimate by the Ministry of Education, there were 721 joint programs in China at the end ofyear 2002, an increase of more than nine times over 1995.

The future potential of China as an exporter of higher education services appears to be challenged by China's entry into the WTO, at least in the view of many officials in the Chinese higher education sector. China became a formal member of the WTO on December 11, 2002, but negotiations began much earlier. China's economic reforms qualified China for membership in a number of international economic organizations and the country became an observer of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT)in 1952 and formally applied for full GATT membership in July 1986．The 8th International Trade Round, the so-called Uraguay Round (1986-94) replaced the GATT by the WTO. GATT Member-States had determined that international trade could be increased by structuring agreements similar to the GATT that focus on trade in areas other than goods, such as services (e.g. education and health) and intellectual property rights. Thereupon, three multilateral agreemenis became the pillars within the framework of the new World Trade organization: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the General Agreement on Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.(TRIPS)