China is the world’s largest exporter and one of its most controversial exports lately is students.
Every year it is estimated that more than 700,000 Chinese leave their country to study abroad.
And many of these end up in the UK, learning at British universities.
There are around 144,000 in Britain according to the Higher Education Statistics Authority, a number that has increased by 50% in just five years.
As Chinese student flows to the UK have grown in recent decades, there has been increasing scrutiny of their impact.
The chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, argued last year that the growing financial dependence of UK universities on tuition fees from Chinese students, some with hardline nationalist views , could compromise the academic freedom of these institutions.
Another growing theme is that so-called Crazy Rich Asians, the sons and daughters of wealthy Chinese industrialists, are flooding campuses and crowding out British domestic students.
However, far less attention has been paid to the views and attitudes of these Chinese students themselves.
Glasgow is a popular destination for overseas Chinese students, with more than 6,000 studying on its campus, according to university officials.
For a recent Radio 4 documentary, we spent time with some of those students, listening to their perspectives and stories.
And what we found disproved many of the stereotypes and raised concerns that have received little attention.
Despite the Crazy Rich Asian cliché, we discovered that many had modest financial backgrounds.
“I was 24 years old and had no experience of living in another country,” says student Hua.
“I come from a small town in the countryside of Shandong province.”
In fact, most had never left China before arriving and experienced culture shock upon arrival.
Glasgow’s early appeal, in addition to its strong academic reputation, was seen by many as the way the Victorian university buildings looked in brochures, like Hogwarts from the Harry Potter movies.
“I was surprised by the buildings in Glasgow because I had never seen them before,” says Yifei.
Some felt that they were not getting value for money from the considerable sums that their families had skimped and saved over many years to finance their education.
“I would say that Chinese students don’t get enough care or services for their money,” Hua told us.
Luna asks the university a question.
“Sometimes we call ourselves study machines,” she says.
“Do you really want to be a study machine manufacturer, or do you really care about the well-being of students and want to help them achieve their best during their studies abroad?” asks Luna.
Some wanted to integrate more into local life and felt that the university was not doing enough to facilitate that, as it was too prepared to house them in large exclusively Chinese residential blocks, such as the city’s West Village development, and was not doing enough to develop your English. language skills.
“I really want to make friends with the local people, but I don’t know how to communicate with them, that makes me a little sad,” says Fiona.
The University of Glasgow told us: “As well as language assistance, the university offers international students a host of dedicated services, from practical and academic advice and guidance to health and wellness support, from before they leave. to graduation and beyond.”
Regarding politics, despite the fear that students are intolerant mouthpieces of the Communist Party imposing their views on others, what we found most often was a reluctance to engage in political discussions.
“Even if we have more access to different opinions on democracy and other political issues, we don’t talk about it much because we’ll get in trouble,” says a graduate student named Eugene.
“We may have some opinions in our own hearts, in our own minds, but we don’t talk about this.”
But he added that one of the attractions of a UK university, at least for him, was that it allowed for more individuality and self-expression than a Chinese higher education.
“You don’t have to be a product on an assembly line,” he says.
However, a student named Jo from Taiwan said that she felt uncomfortable due to the nationalistic political attitudes of some Chinese students.
“I don’t like making friends with Chinese students because they usually intimidate me. They always say ‘you’re Chinese’ but I’m not,” says Jo.
However, the point is that there is no typical Chinese student abroad experience, just as there is no typical Chinese student abroad.
Cora Xu, a former Chinese international student who now teaches at Durham University, told us that the core problem is that these students tend to be viewed and treated as a homogeneous bloc, both in public discourse and by university administrators. .
“They are treated as a faceless group that shares certain negative stereotypes,” she says.
“[But] They’re extremely heterogeneous, they’re extremely diverse, they’re very, very vibrant.”
The Radio 4 documentary Chinese on Campus is available on BBC Sounds.
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