Studies of Chinese (visiting) international doctoral students typically focus on how students are socialized into the Western academy. Not only does the literature reinforce Western institutions as 'the academic centre', but it also conjures a unidirectional image of academic learning and knowledge transfer from the West to the rest of the world. This paper complexifies these images by proposing academic association as an alternative image to understand students' experiences. Inspired by assemblage thinking and actor network theory, academic association directs attention to the processes through which students translate themselves within research and knowledge practices and become researchers and knowledge producers. Empirically, drawing on a multiple-case study, this paper traces how 18 short-term Chinese visiting doctoral students built pathways to overseas studies, became enrolled within academic networks and practices, and assembled research and knowledge projects. It also highlights how the students' subjectivities shifted as they knotted themselves into various relations with others, both human and non-human, in the academy. It is argued that as students articulated themselves to 'the academic highways' during their visits, they also multiplied the highways and became, simultaneously, the subjects of academic 'freedom' and 'control'.