Cheng Fangping, education professor at Renmin University of China, said, "International education cooperation and exchanges have been an important part of the nation's education policies since reform and opening-up."

This is driven by the opening-up policy and the nation's efforts to become a higher education power globally, Cheng said.

The rise of the country's universities in global rankings is not surprising, as no nation puts more resources into higher education than China, which is home to the world's fastest-growing higher education system, in quality as well as quantity, he said.

In 2017, China launched the Double World-Class Project, which includes building world-class universities with Chinese characteristics and Chinese first-class disciplines at a global level. The aim is for the country to have 42 world-class universities and some 456 world-class disciplines in 95 universities by the middle of the century.

According to the plan, by 2050, the number of world-class Chinese universities and disciplines will have risen massively. They will be at the top of world-class rankings and China will have a strong higher education system.

The country spent more than 4.6 trillion yuan ($668 billion) on education nationwide last year, up by 8.39 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Education. More than 1.2 trillion yuan was spent on higher education, up by 8.15 percent from the previous year and accounting for about 1.3 percent of national GDP.