New York University, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Liverpool University, among others, have all set up campuses in China.

Meanwhile the Chinese government is pouring money in to transforming its education sector: in the last decade alone it quadrupled its number of annual university graduates. The country has also become the world's largest exporter of students, with nearly as many Chinese students studying for postgraduate degrees in England as there are Brits.

It now ranks 3rd in the world's most popular places for international study, behind only the UK and America, and is expected to attract more than half a million international students by 2020 studying degrees and study abroad programmes, according to the US-based Institute of International Education’s Project Atlas.

Challenges of China

But this huge expansion is not without its problems: there have been concerns over academic integrity at some institutions. In July 2012 Yale cancelled its programme at Peking University. The American Ivy League university allegedly blamed its decision on lower than expected interest in its courses. But its programme also faced controversy. In 2007 a biology professor openly criticised administrators for tolerating alleged widespread plagiarism amongst Chinese students.

International campuses like UNNC face a unique set of difficulties. Administrators must try to ensure a high standard of education and academic freedom in a country where politics can interfere in everything. In January, China's education minister vowed to ban university text books that promote 'Western values’, sparking widespread concern in Western educational circles.

The Chinese Ministry of Education has promised to provide foreign universities with the same freedoms they enjoy in their home countries. But the institutions must also comply with Chinese rules and regulations which means studying of Marxism is compulsory for Chinese students, for example, but not for international students.

And China's strict control of the internet also means that some foreign-based websites such as Google Scholar, a search engine which indexes scholarly literature across formats and topics, is blocked in the country. Researchers must use virtual private networks (VPN) in order to use such services.

There are other practical difficulties. While seminars are taught in English, many international students find themselves in classes where the majority of their classmates are not native English speakers. And this can create some significant obstacles.

“Mostly, Chinese students in class don't participate. Back home when you know you are right you tell the lecturer,” said Ella Appiah a 20-year-old student from Ghana studying for a bachelor’s degree in International Communications at UNNC.