Where institutions are recruiting
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University is advertising strategic management and organizations positions in Suzhou. Its research-track listing covers all faculty ranks, while its practice-track opening seeks associate professors and above. Both describe compensation as competitive and tied to qualifications and experience.
Wenzhou Business College's advertisements list Shanghai as the location for openings in economics, finance, accounting, computer science, sports management, physical education, product or graphic design, nutrition and dietetics, international business, ESL/EAP/TESOL, and communications covering media and journalism. The positions span lecturer, assistant professor and associate professor ranks, depending on the field. The college also lists student advisor and student counselor openings.
In Zhuhai, Guangdong, Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University is recruiting in artificial intelligence and digital media, applied mathematics, applied psychology, environmental science and digital media management. Available ranks vary by discipline, and the advertisements tie salaries to qualifications and experience.
The Times Higher Education Unijobs page covers mainland China and names partner institutions including Zhejiang University, Duke Kunshan University, SUSTech, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Nanjing University and Tianjin University.
International recruitment policies and eligibility
The jobs page links China's university development to institutional leadership and sustained Ministry of Education support. It identifies the 1,000 Talents, 10,000 Talents and 1,000 Young Scholars programs, alongside the initiative it calls Double First-Rate, as efforts that emphasize internationally diverse faculties with a global focus.
A broader recruitment commitment appears in China's Outline of a Plan for Building China into a Leading Country in Education 2024–2035, launched on January 19, 2025. An Australian Department of Education briefing, with information current as of July 2025, says the plan calls for recruiting high-level teachers worldwide and strengthening international cooperation and exchanges in teacher training. It sets interim milestones for 2027 and a goal of a mature, world-leading education system by 2035.
For early-career researchers, the National Natural Science Foundation of China runs the National Science Fund Program for Outstanding Young Scholars (Overseas). The program targets researchers around the world, including non-Chinese nationals, in natural sciences and engineering.
SUSTech's 2025 call specified that applicants must have been born on or after January 1, 1985, have at least 36 months of continuous overseas teaching or research experience after earning a PhD, and have no full-time work experience in China before January 1, 2024. Successful applicants must leave their overseas positions and commit to working full-time in China for at least three years.
Double First-Class funding and proposed expansion
The national program called Double First-Rate on the jobs page is known in official reporting as Double First-Class. The page traces it to the earlier 211 and 985 programs and describes a 30-year ambition to bring Chinese institutions to the top of global rankings.
More recent details come from a State Council report submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and covered by China Daily on December 25, 2025. According to that report, the government launched Double First-Class in 2015. Its second phase, covering 2022–2027, includes 147 universities selected through a dynamic process.
For 2021–2025, central government allocations to Double First-Class universities totaled 181 billion yuan, or about $25.7 billion, from general public budgets. The report said those allocations leveraged more than 110 billion yuan in local fiscal contributions. Regional governments also supported more than 400 local high-level universities and over 1,300 distinctive academic disciplines.
Universities in the initiative account for the training of more than half of China's master's students and nearly 80 percent of its doctoral students, according to the report.
In its December 2025 report, the State Council proposed a moderate expansion of Double First-Class to make more high-quality higher education resources available. The proposal also called for an orderly increase in high-quality undergraduate enrollment and expanded postgraduate training.
Enrollment, rankings and research income
The jobs page describes China as a rapidly growing higher education market with well over 2,200 tertiary institutions. Its rankings context is explicitly historical: 72 Chinese institutions appeared in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019, including seven in the top 200.
The State Council report provides a more recent picture of the system's scale. China arranged 3.78 trillion yuan in government higher education spending during 2021–2024. By 2024, the higher education gross enrollment ratio had reached 60.8 percent, an increase of 6.4 percentage points from 2020. The report put the number of people with a university-level education at more than 240 million.
Mainland institutions occupied five of the top 10 positions in the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2025, published on April 23, 2025. Tsinghua University led for the seventh consecutive year, followed by Peking University. Across mainland China, 25 institutions achieved their highest-ever placements and 28 moved up from 2024.
THE said a methodology change introduced in 2024 enabled it to quantify the Double First-Class program's success for the first time. Its 2025 rankings data also showed that Tsinghua's research income per academic staff member reached $955,000 (£756,000) in 2022, compared with $762,000 at South Korea's Seoul National University and $735,000 at the National University of Singapore.
