Building an education power, or a powerful country in education, is China’s grand goal and inevitable direction of educational development in the current period. This study, based on the understanding of the connotations of an education power, constructs an education power evaluation index system, and makes a systematic exploration into the trends of the changes in Education Power Index in China and the education powers across the globe. According to estimates, the Education Power Indexes across the world tended to rise between 2012 and 2022, and those showing better and relatively stable rankings were the top 15 countries enjoying a high index of human development, and high income except Russia; between 2012 and 2022, China’s ranking in the Education Power Index rose from 49th to 23rd, making it the country with the fastest improvement in the world; in the building of an education power, China made great progress in education quality and service capacity, but it still had apparent defects in the popularization and completion of upper secondary education, the popularization of higher education, the proportion of high-skilled employees, the relative quantity of researchers, and the population’s average years of education. Based on the successful experience of the world’s major education powers and the current development of education, China needs to promote higher-level education popularization, optimize the types of vocational education, and lead the development of urgently-needed talents through higher education so as to provide a powerful guarantee for the building of an education power and improve the international influence of China’s education.