The air in Guiyang smells of osmanthus and coffee in May. Inside the cavernous hall of the Guizhou International Convention Center, 23-year-old Siti Nurhaliza from Bandung, Indonesia, is chatting in fluent Chinese with a university admissions officer. She clutches a freshly printed acceptance letter — a joint program in data science and artificial intelligence between Guizhou University and Indonesia’s Institut Teknologi Bandung.
“Three years ago, I was staring at a map in my Jakarta high school classroom, tracing the railway line connecting China and ASEAN,” Siti says with a laugh. “Now I spend every day learning how to make that railway run smarter with code.”
Siti is not alone. Since 2023, over 175,000 students have crossed borders between China and ASEAN nations. Behind that number are countless young people like her, crossing the South China Sea to sit in Chinese classrooms. From Vietnamese students at Guangxi University to local students at Xiamen University’s Malaysia campus, an invisible Education Silk Road is weaving the youth of ten nations into a tightly connected network.
From Policy Papers to Classroom Seats
What does 175,000 students actually look like? Lined up end to end, they would stretch from Guiyang to Hanoi. But numbers alone don’t tell the full story. The real story unfolds in classrooms, laboratories, and canteen conversations.
On the campus of Guangxi University, Vietnamese student Nguyen Van Hui arrives at the library at seven every morning. He’s pursuing a master’s degree in international trade, and his course load includes “Cross-border E-commerce Under the RCEP Framework” — taught with bilingual Chinese-Vietnamese materials. “The professor uses Vietnam’s Lazada and China’s Taobao as comparative cases,” Nguyen says. “This teaching style makes me feel like what I’m learning isn’t abstract theory, but tools I can use tomorrow.”
This “theory plus practice” model is precisely how China-ASEAN education cooperation has evolved from “student exchange” to “capability building.” After RCEP took effect, tariff barriers between member states gradually fell. But what truly constrains trade efficiency is the cross-border mobility of talent. A Vietnamese graduate who studied bilingual Chinese-Vietnamese business negotiation in Nanning gains an extra dimension of advantage over local competitors when applying to Chinese companies in Ho Chi Minh City.
The “Education Community” at the Guiyang Forum
The 2025 China-ASEAN Education Cooperation Week in Guiyang carried the theme “Smart Humanities, Education Integration, Collaborative Development.” It was more than a slogan. Over the week-long event, 116 sub-activities unfolded密集, with more than 60 cooperation agreements signed — covering the full spectrum from higher education cluster development to vocational education coordination, from language education linkage to deepened research collaboration.
One highlight of the Cooperation Week was the annual awards ceremony for the ASEAN-China Young Leaders Scholarship (ACYLS). Jointly established by the ASEAN Secretariat and China’s Ministry of Education, this full scholarship program funds hundreds of outstanding ASEAN students to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in China each year. Recipients receive full tuition waivers, living stipends, and round-trip airfare.
Phan Sothy from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was among the 2025 ACYLS recipients. She will pursue a master’s in public policy at Tsinghua University, researching “Belt and Road infrastructure investment and poverty reduction effects.” “I want to understand how those roads and bridges actually changed ordinary people’s lives,” she says. “This isn’t just an academic question — it’s the responsibility of our generation.”
Career Blueprints Starting from Guiyang
The ultimate test of education cooperation is where graduates end up working. In the employment exhibition zone at the Guiyang Forum, queues formed at the recruitment booths of Chinese companies like Huawei, Alibaba, and PowerChina. These companies are expanding rapidly across Southeast Asia and desperately need bilingual, bicultural talent who understand both Chinese headquarters and local markets.
“Our campus recruitment quotas across all ten ASEAN countries increased 40% this year compared to last,” revealed Huawei’s Southeast Asia HR director at the forum. “But the most scarce positions aren’t technical — they’re project management roles that can coordinate between Chinese headquarters and local teams.”
This is precisely where education cooperation delivers its value. A Vietnamese student who completed four years of undergraduate study at Guangxi University and an internship at the Guiyang Cooperation Week has already transformed from “foreign student” to “cross-border talent.” They have not only mastered professional knowledge but built networks and cultural understanding that transcend national borders.
Siti’s story continues. After completing her joint program in Guiyang, she plans to return to Indonesia and join a Chinese tech company building the supporting systems for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway. “I study data science,” she says, “but what truly gives me confidence is knowing how to find common ground between China and Indonesia.”
From Jakarta to Guiyang, from classroom to workplace, a new Education Silk Road is being paved. This road has no camels or deserts — only code and contracts — but its destination is the same: a more closely connected world.
