Cosmopolitical Education

Abstract

Between 1978 and 2013, around 2.6 million students left China for overseas study, and over 90 per cent of them left since 2000 (China National Bureau of Statistics 2013). This makes China the main student-sending country of the world for the past three decades. The top destinations of the Chinese students are English-speaking countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada as well as Japan. Low tuition fees, less-restrictive visa policies and high quality of education also make some European countries, such as France and Germany, relatively popular. The most popular fields of study are languages, business and management, physical and life sciences, and economics (Ministry of Education P.R.C. 2008; see also Brooks and Waters 2011:61). Overseas study is a considerable investment to the families of self-sponsored students. The expenses vary depending on the country of study, the level of the degree and the course, but at the time of my fieldwork typically ranged between 150,000 and 400,000 CNY per year, which was 5–13 times the average annual income of urban households (China National Bureau of Statistics 2009). The first student migrants in the 1980s were predominantly sons of elite families and were funded by Chinese scholarships, but by the early 2000s, the majority of the students were self-sponsored, came from a variety of family backgrounds, and around half of them were women (Table 3.3).