Foreign .edu websites with country codes?

Doing research for keywords and I found a site that is .edu.hk, is this even a legit .edu website or not? and would Google still treat any backlinks from it as it would a regular .edu? (probably not right?)

The .edu is usually obtained by US institutions, but it can also be obtained by international ones (I don't know the exact procedure). It doesn't matter if it's .edu / .edu.xx / .com / .org as long as the website represents an educational institution(university, high school, etc), you should be going for the authority of that website not for its tld.

Hope that helps