A growing number of international doctoral students choose to study in China, a non-traditional learning destination. However, relatively few studies have investigated these students' academic writing practices while undertaking their studies in China. This study draws upon Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus, and capital, and the notion of global-national-local imbrications, to explore 20 international doctoral students' language-engagement experiences in a Chinese university. Our analysis found that English and Chinese co-exist to varying and sometimes shifting degrees in doctoral students' academic writing practices. As a result, some students potentially developed a hybrid, 'in-between', cosmopolitan habitus. Notably, however, other students felt disempowered in the Chinese HE 'sub-field', with its unique logics of practice. Students' experiences indicate that multifarious language practices potentially create a heavily hybridised 'sub-field' characterised by a multitude of imbricating global, national, and local influences, and highlight the need to ensure that the language of instruction is indeed oriented to student learning -- a language for learning.