He says his province has "recorded a 95 percent employment rate in the past 10 years, as most students find jobs upon graduation. Seventy-five percent of them secure jobs near their graduating schools. This is due to successful collaboration between industries and education."

Development and implementation of ideal policies have also strongly contributed to reforms in the education sector by developing guidelines to sustain and promote education quality, adding impetus to the collaboration between learning institutions and industries, experts say. Besides funding research and simulation programs in colleges, the enterprises offer apprenticeship opportunities to students and lecturers.

"So, this presents the perfect opportunity for the institutions to assist companies that are scaling up their business abroad and help them steer in unfamiliar operating environments," says Yu.

For it has not always been smooth sailing for Chinese companies abroad. According to Gong Jiayan, the managing director of AVIC International's project engineering company, the company's expansion ambition over the years has faced a shortage in the quality and quantity of labor.

"This is because some countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are emerging from political instability and underinvestment in the education sector," Gong says.

Some countries have hardly any infrastructure for technical vocational education and training, while others use outdated equipment. These markets are characterized by high unemployment rates, as graduates are poorly equipped to work, especially in semi-skilled, labor-intensive sectors as well as new and emerging sectors.

"Competing national priorities consequently have seen countries continue to under invest in the technical vocational education training subsector, forcing foreign companies, investing in the country, to bridge this gap," says Gong. "We have had to increase our expenditure to develop capacity-building programs in countries like Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Gabon and Zambia. These projects have been meaningful in our operational strategy abroad."

The alliance therefore promises to meet industrial demands of countries and will play an integral role in transforming socioeconomic development, says Zhang Huibo, the principal of Ningbo Polytechnic, who notes that more than 20 countries have shown interest in establishing Chinese colleges in their countries. "This is a great catalyst for poverty reduction," adds Zhang, noting that promising young people who cannot afford an education are eligible for government-sponsored scholarships.

Technical vocational education and training institutes face a new set of challenges, especially in government policies and regulations, experts say. The Chinese institutions are well advanced in terms of knowledge capital, compared with their counterparts in Europe and Africa, they say.

Chinese institutions say they are ready to offer more scholarship programs to ensure that best practices are shared. This is in addition to establishing joint research projects to enhance collaboration, staff exchanges and conferences that will bring together entrepreneurs and academia. Establishing Chinese institutes in foreign countries is also possible, experts say.

The proposals resonated well with Aryal Prahlad, undersecretary in Nepal's Ministry of Education. He says the country's higher education lags behind China's, and such an alliance would be a boost to its industrial ambitions. "We have more than 400 programs currently running, but we still lack the technical capacity required to accelerate the country's economic development. This is what we are seeking in this alliance," he says.

He adds that the country's rich cultural heritage could be the starting point for exchanges with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.