The Education Partnership Assistance (EPA) is an institutional arrangement that has played an important role in the balanced and sustainable development of higher education in China, in which universities of East China provide the paired universities in West China with various assistance. EPA is part of the political commitment made by the Chinese government to fulfil sustainable and balanced development. By applying a policy process framework and qualitative text analysis to the government and universities’ official documents, we find EPA is primarily based on the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s ideological cornerstones of “common prosperity”. Over the past two decades, by conducting leadership secondment, faculty and student training, and ICT and library development, EPA has improved the development of universities in West China, and the central government’s current emphasis remains on the continuation of EPA. However, this paper argues that EPA cannot be going on indefinitely and that true sustainability is contingent on the capacity building of the recipient universities, rather than on the endless assistance from supporting universities. EPA is a localized action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in China. It sheds light on the connections between domestic aid and the SDGs from a supplementary perspective.

The considerable institutional distance between home and host countries of most international branch campuses (IBCs) necessitates that they address the managerial challenge of balancing global integration and local responsiveness. Previous studies have investigated IBCs’ strategies for addressing this challenge as well as the macro- or micro-level factors impacting their strategies. This study extends previous research by constructing a multilevel framework for understanding both macro- and micro-level factors and adopting it to guide the empirical investigation of two Canadian cases. The results demonstrate that the two Canadian IBCs have maintained a high level of localisation in staffing but different levels of globalisation in curriculum. Like many other IBCs, these two IBCs, as institutions, are inactive in research, although they do provide occasional support for research activities. Such strategies are increasingly influenced by the institutional forces in their host countries than those in their home country at the macro level. At the micro level, the strategies are primarily impacted by their students’ educational demands. These findings exemplify strategies for other IBCs and for Canadian postsecondary institutions that consider opening overseas campuses.

Private education has been an important part of China's education system since ancient times, but it has undergone many changes. Many factors have led to the emergence of private education in contemporary China, including the impact of global liberalism and the internal drive of domestic education development needs. In recent years, private education in China has reached a new crossroads, which is not a question of staying or going, but a question of where to go. This chapter begins by tracing the history of private education in China, mainly focusing on the development of a private education system with Chinese characteristics (also known as minban education) since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Then we analyse the historical development and current situation of Chinese international schools, which represent private school education; and the changes in private supplementary tutoring, representing private after-school education, concentrating in particular on the reasons behind it and changes regarding regulating it under the Double Reduction policy. In the last section, we review the reform and development of private education in China and discuss the prospects for it.

This article presents a broad historical review of the European Union (EU)’s policies on gender equality in education. The review shows that the EU’s policies on gender equality in education have gone through four stages: germination, foundation, formation and deepening. Though the EU has sought to call for greater gender equality in education and made some progress and achievements, gender equality in education is still an unfinished business because its success largely depends on enforcement, regulation and a gender equality culture in society. In reality, the EU, as a supranational organization, does not have enough enforcement power or regulation of its policies, and the patriarchal culture still exists and has a hidden legitimacy in society.