European students on the brink, locked out by China’s zero-Covid rules
- Despite paying full tuition to universities in China, those affected cannot enter the country and are limited to online classes in the early hours
- A psychiatrist says the time differences and uncertainties have been causing great psychological suffering for some time
On weeknights before 3am, as many students make their way home from bars and nightclubs, Patrick crawls out of bed in his rural Irish hometown, fires up his computer and knuckles down for long medical lectures delivered live from a Chinese university more than 8,000km (5,000 miles) away.
He has maintained this routine through two years of study at Shanxi Medical University – an institution he has never set foot in, but to which he is paying full tuition fees of around €3,400 (US$3,560) a year.
Since the pandemic began, students from EU countries have been unable to obtain visas to take up their studies at Chinese universities in person, due to tight controls on who can enter the country.
Now, though, they are watching enviously as counterparts from nations with friendly relations with China – including Russia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Solomon Islands – return to the country for in-person classes, following reported discussions between their governments and Beijing.
Even students from countries with strained ties with China, like South Korea and India – and some elite American Schwarzmann scholars – have been able to return. For European students, however, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel, and the situation is taking a toll on the students’ mental health.
Patrick, for one, said he had been feeling “definitely anxiety a lot and a lot of stress”.