This paper tries to examine how higher education in China and Britain has been affected by market forces between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, from three major issues. Comparing the experiences of both places, the paper argues that unlike the case of British counterpart, where marketisation of education has shifted to a corporate management approach, the Chinese experience can be argued as being the government's attempt to use market forces and new initiatives from the non-state sectors, rather then an ideological shift to managerialism and its practices.