“Why should a ‘foreigner’ be better than me?”: preferential practices in junior academic faculty recruitment among mainland Chinese universities

China’s phenomenal growth in higher education has received increasing scholarly attention, particularly its initiative to build world-class universities. Though a crucial contributor to its rapid development, the changing hiring practices of mainland Chinese university employers remain largely underexposed. This study presents qualitative evidence drawn from document analysis and in-depth interviews to show current trends, which reveal university employers’ widespread preference for graduates with an overseas background, will tend to deprive domestically trained graduates of vital opportunities for career development, which may have detrimental consequences in the long run. The study found that a substantial number of Chinese university employers explicitly articulated their talent preferences, with a strong favour towards applicants with overseas credentials and/or experience. Further analysis of the textual data identified two nuanced trends: universities in a more economically developed region and at a higher level tended to have more rigid and exclusive recruitment preferences for candidates with an overseas background; competitive employers tended to be selective in applicants’ overseas backgrounds by gauging their potential productivity measured in quantifiable research outputs. In response to the pressure brought by such preferential practices, domestic doctorates were found to be learning to accept and struggle to cope with the changes. These findings are discussed in the context of the internationalisation of higher education and the popularisation of overseas education with implications for and beyond the Chinese experience.