I'm working as a manager in Shenzhen. I have a guy on my team who's studying to do his IELTS so that he can get accepted into a foreign university to do his masters in computer science. He says that he can't get into Tsinghua (or any Chinese university at that tier) because the competition's too fierce, and all the universities a step below are not well enough respected. Hence studying for IELTS. He's targeting University of Toronto or something at that level. For what it's worth, it's only one anecdote from one Chinese guy.