Xiamen University

Xiamen University was founded in 1921 by Tan Kah Kee, a Chinese businessman based in Singapore, and is a Project 985 institution on the Fujian coast. It is strongest in mathematics, chemistry, oceanography, economics, management, law and communication. It operates a full campus in Malaysia, at Sepang near Kuala Lumpur, which is unusual: most Sino-foreign arrangements bring foreign universities into China rather than the reverse. Xiamen University Malaysia teaches substantially in English and charges different fees. For a Kazakh applicant that opens a question worth settling. A Malaysian campus avoids Chinese visa requirements, teaches in English, and sits in a country with easier air connections to Central Asia. But whether the degree, the teaching and the recognition are equivalent should be established rather than assumed, and the two campuses admit separately. Xiamen itself is a mild coastal city with living costs well below the first-tier centres.