In recent decades many East Asian countries have initiated ambitious policies to increase their global prominence as education hubs. This article examines the development of Taiwan’s international student recruitment policies from 1950 to 2011, exemplifying the case in a non-Western, non-English speaking context. While Taiwan’s case is distinctive with the dominance of noneconomic factors in shaping the state policy orientation and agendas, the strong role of the state and the Confucian model of higher education constitute a valid example of developments in the internationalization of higher education in East Asia. The analysis further shows that the intertwining forces of localization, nationalization, and globalization influenced the policy development throughout three stages of the trajectory. These findings demonstrate the transformationalist viewpoint of globalization and support the "glonacal agency approach" proposed by Rhoades and Marginson claiming that local, national, and global domains are simultaneously significant in understanding globalization and higher education.