There is a noticeable reverse flow of academics from the Global North to the Global South in the recent decade. The study examines the emerging mobility trend by investigating three institutions in China. Based on case studies of traditional universities and Sino-foreign universities, the study argues that international academics in Chinese universities have experienced individual empowerment in terms of expanded academic networks and enhanced professional development. But they might face collective disempowerment due to the different professional values and protocols such as 'routinised improvisation,' and a lacking of bargaining power resulted from the university's inexplicit institutional power dynamics and a hierarchical approach to management. The findings suggest that the construction of international academics' experience is a process shaped and re-shaped by the interplay across individual interpretation, institutional configuration and national context, and reveal the complexities of higher education internationalisation in countries at the periphery of the global higher education landscape.