How luxury brands could suffer if Chinese students stay home and the ‘wake-up call’ for labels failing to penetrate China market

Wealthy Chinese students are huge spenders on luxury but far fewer first years are likely to take up new places overseas in the coming academic year

Smaller brands that have failed to penetrate the Chinese market will need to work much harder on it in the years ahead, one consultant says

Reading Time:4 minutes

Students at Yale University in the US. Chinese students are one of the main sources of international students at universities around the world, and lower numbers of them could have a serious impact on local luxury retailers.

Published: 7:15am, 8 Jul 2020Updated: 4:33pm, 8 Jul 2020

Without the yearly influx of rich Chinese students, the department stores and high streets of Vancouver in Canada, Australia’s Melbourne and Boston in the United States would look desolate.

Even retailers in global hubs like London and New York are anxious about what damage an end to this much-needed cash-flow would do to their businesses.

More than 1.6 million Chinese are studying overseas, of whom at least 1.42 million remained abroad when countries closed their borders and airlines cancelled flights because of the growing pandemic. Some, stranded and concerned by rising incidents of xenophobic violence, initially regretted their decision to study abroad.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced that it would bar foreign students whose classes are online only from coming back to the US to resume their studies. Those already in the US will have to leave and take classes from their home countries. This recent development is likely to have an even larger impact on the decreasing number of international students from countries such as China who currently live in the US.

Chinese graduates of Columbia University attend the commencement ceremony in New York City. Photo: Corbis

“The Chinese students who were stuck here [in London] tried really hard to get back home,” says Rocky Chi, the Britain-based head of planning for Emerging Communications, a marketing firm specialising in Chinese branding. “Some of them got on private planes, but the majority stayed and found that – after the initial panic – they enjoyed their quarantined life in Britain.”

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x