Chinese still choosing to study in US despite hostilities – but growth of the trend slows sharply

Rate of increase in the number of Chinese students in the US has been in uninterrupted decline since the 2009-10 academic year

The number of newly arriving Chinese undergraduates was almost flat and the number of non-degree students fell 5.4 per cent

Reading Time:6 minutes

Graduates at Columbia University in New York wave Chinese national flags. Photo: Xinhua

Mark Magnierin New YorkandRobert Delaney

Published: 1:13pm, 18 Nov 2019Updated: 2:30am, 19 Nov 2019

Sun Hang, a 19-year-old first-year student from eastern China’s Zhejiang province, decided to study in the United States at George Washington University despite his concern about growing US-China tension and the US government’s increasingly restrictive visa policy.

“It will allow me to have a good resume, get a good job in China and enjoy myself,” said Sun, a history major dressed in a long black coat against the cold. “US education is much better” than that in Australia or England, partly because of its better reputation, he added. t

The allure of a US education for many Chinese appears, at first glance, to be holding firm. Despite the US-China trade war, growing mutual distrust and a ramped-up counter-espionage campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), last year brought a modest increase in the number of Chinese students studying in the US.

According to the “2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange” – based on a survey of more than 2,800 US schools that was released on Monday by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the State Department – the number of Chinese students rose 1.7 per cent in the 2017-18 academic year over the previous year.

This amounted to 369,548 Chinese, according to the survey, making Chinese the largest group of foreign students in the US for the tenth consecutive year.

China was followed by India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Canada as the nationality of America’s 1.1 million foreign students, representing a 0.5 per cent increase over the year before. International students contributed US$44.7 billion to the US economy in 2018, according to Commerce Department data, a 5.5 per cent increase.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x