Limited researches on the flow of international students have explore the impact of income per capital of their home countries.To address the research question，this paper presents an empirical study from the Chinese context.Developing a theoretical framework upon income effect and substitution effect，it applies the gravity model to examine panel data of international students from 188 countries during 1999—2013 in China.The study has three findings.First，the substitution effect dominates degree programs，meaning that home countries income per capita negatively impacts their total number of international students in randomeffect models，while there is only an income effect in nondegree programs，showing a positive impact.Secondly，such an impact on fellowship programs is similar to that on degree programs，while a similar relationship exists between selfsponsored and nondegree programs.Last but not least，if we use fixedeffect models to discuss degree and fellowship programs，the impact of income per capita would be reversed.