Chinese vocational institutes are increasingly offering programs that train international students from various regions in manufacturing, supply chain management, and cross-border marketing.

In classrooms and training centres across China, a growing number of students from Southeast Asia, Africa and beyond are learning not just the Chinese language, but how the country’s factories operate, how supply chains are managed and how products are marketed and sold across borders. Hebei Software Institute, in the northern city of Baoding, has been at the forefront of the push. The vocational college said it had established multiple overseas-oriented programmes in recent years, particularly....