Competing Imaginaries and Renegotiating Knowledge Hierarchies: International Student Experiences and Perceptions at a Chinese Branch Campus in Malaysia

China’s growing role as an exporter of transnational higher education (TNHE) has significant implications for reshaping global educational landscapes. Yet, research has primarily focused on China as an importer, leaving this emerging role underexplored. Furthermore, existing studies largely focus on top-down policy narratives—how China employs TNHE as a tool for soft power and knowledge diplomacy. However, at the micro level, how international students renegotiate these top-down narratives within existing Western-hegemonic knowledge hierarchies remain largely underexplored.

This presentation addresses the conference theme by contributing an empirical case study of international student experiences at a Chinese international branch campus in Malaysia, embedded in post-colonial geographies. Reflecting competing imaginaries, the campus combines Chinese cultural symbols with English as the medium of instruction, where local Malays become an ethnic minority. The diverse student body includes 7,100 students from over 40 countries, with around 30% Chinese and 60% Malaysian. Based on 40 student interviews, our study reveals how different groups of international students renegotiate Chinese state policy narratives—particularly under the Belt and Road Initiative—alongside post-colonial discourses, such as the quota system limiting Malaysian Chinese access to higher education, and the broader global knowledge hierarchy dominated by the Global North. Perceptions of the Chinese international branch campus vary: Chinese students view it as ‘domestic education overseas’, Malaysian Chinese see it through historical ties to China, while other international students are attracted by its association with modernity.

The findings offer a nuanced, multifaceted understanding of the renegotiation of knowledge hierarchies at a Chinese international branch campus in Malaysia. These hierarchies are reinforced by macro-level post-colonial narratives in Malaysia and the use of English as the language of instruction on campus; contested by students’ aspirations for China both in terms of history and modernity; and complicated by the neoliberalism for university’s financial sustainability.