Though the literature on the WTO before and after Taiwan’s accession into the WTO grows, it presents more theoretical than empirical studies. Based on the author’ s previous studies, such as proposing evaluative framework in studying the impact of the WTO and WTO-GATS on higher education and analyzing the case of Taiwan, the current study chooses Hong Kong, contrast to Taiwan, as the case to refine the analytical frameworks through analyzing how it regulates its non-local higher education courses. For achieving the purposes, this study has carried out an empirical study in Hong Kong. The interviews are adopted for data collection. The main findings include:1 the framework for evaluating the WTO-GATS and education market opening is empirically applicable to the case of HK; 2 the development of non-local higher education courses in HK are closely related to the limited capacity of expanding local higher education, free market economy, and current governmental policies; 3 the main considerations of running non-local courses include:the quality of the programme, the demand for the programme, the mode of instruction, the medium of instruction, and no direct conf lict with local courses; 4 the system of registration, rather than of accreditation, is adopted in the operation of non-local course; therefore, the quality of those course heavily relies on the local higher education institutions; 5 the competition between non-local and local degree courses is not much as expected, but the non-local courses still bring some positive impacts on local higher education institutions’ thinking. The empirical results support the feasibility of the framework in evaluating the relationship between WTO-GATS and the education market opening among WTO members, no matter which have made any commitments under the GATS or not. Finally, based on the results, the certain suggestion on planning the limited opening of the non-local courses in Taiwan are proposed.