Abstract

Chinese-foreign cooperative education has become an important part of the internationalization of higher education in China after the rapid development of the last forty years. The government plays a key role in the development of Chinese-foreign cooperative education through the formulation and implementation of public policies. Furthermore, policy instruments are powerful drivers of policy performance and are central to the policy making process. The study takes the policies related to Chinese-foreign cooperative education since the reform and opening up in 1978 as its research object and builds a two-dimensional analysis framework based on McDonnell and Elmore's policy instrument theory and the elements of Chinese-foreign cooperative education policies. With Nvivo 12 Plus to code and deeply analyze the policy texts, it clarifies the history of the policy on Chinese-foreign cooperative education and reflects on the advantages and shortcomings of the configuration of policy instruments.