This article examines the intents and effects of China's national policies to promote a synergistic approach to university-industry collaborative education. These policies set out to reduce the academia-industry disconnection for engineering education. Based on document analysis and interviews with various types of stakeholders, the study reveals that China has strived for a synergistic approach to education by strengthening the main-actor role of enterprises, framing a policy support system, incorporating external stakeholders in universities' governance structures, and building a coordinated framework for a synergistic approach to education. These policies have enhanced enterprises' motivation to participate in university education, deepened enterprises' engagement with engineering education at course level, and created an educational innovation ecosystem. Some challenges remain such as the mismatch between course update and technological development, the mismatch between costs and return for faculty members, and difficulty in assessment of outcomes. Overwhelmingly, China has tried exploring a model conducive to the improvement of higher education quality, and the overlapping triple helix model, compared with the statist or laissez-faire patterns, has a more robust effect in galvanizing stakeholders towards their collective goal in the Chinese context.