Coronavirus visa uncertainty turns foreign students against China

For Muhammad – not his real name – it was a dream come true when he won a full scholarship with a monthly stipend to study both his masters and PhD in China. Now, he says, he just wants to wake up from the nightmare and he wishes he had chosen to study somewhere else.

Muhammad returned to his home in northeast Africa in February, when embassies evacuated overseas students during the world’s first outbreak of Covid-19 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. He was among the legions of foreign students who left China at that time, and whose futures have been stranded ever since.

Beijing cancelled all visas in March, as it introduced countrywide restrictions to curb the spread of the pandemic. While the Chinese government has gone back and forth in its entry policies for foreign arrivals from different countries since then, the restrictions on foreign student visas have remained largely unchanged.

For Muhammad, it has drastically altered his view of a country he loved. “All my support for China has changed totally. We loved China so much. I was always defending China when friends and family back home blamed Chinese people’s eating habits for the virus and when they made hate speech,” he said.

“They have allowed business travellers … why not us? Now we know we mean nothing to [China].”

China has hailed its stringent entry requirements as the reason for its success in containing the virus, but the cost to its soft power diplomacy is yet to be determined.

Muhammad, who did not want to be identified due to political sensitivities and fear of losing his scholarship, was one of 6,500 international students who signed an online petition calling on China to open its borders to them. They have also organised a campaign on social media, using the hashtag #TakeUsBackToChina.