The ballooning cost of a foreign education has not helped either. The average cost of foreign study is 605,000 yuan ($89,600) this year, nearly a fifth higher than in 2023, according to a survey by New Oriental, a big tutoring company. A weak economy at home has forced families to watch their spending and has made students more cost-conscious. Of those still heading overseas, more are going to places that deliver better perceived value for money. Though official Chinese statistics do not break down where the country’s international students go, data published by other countries show that their numbers are falling in Britain, America and Canada, while rising in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. Hong Kong in particular has emerged as a top choice among prospective students, says Ms Yang, because of its highly ranked schools and closeness to home. As many as four out of five of her clients enquire about studying there. Cheaper destinations such as Malaysia, where students can budget just 100,000 yuan for a degree, also appeal. It is not just that more Chinese students are staying home—a record 10.7m entered tertiary education in China last year. Of those who do go abroad, more and more choose to come back to China after their studies. Last year the proportion of returnees, who are known as haigui or sea turtles, was 94% of outbound students, an all-time high (see chart). Between 2015 and 2025, 5.2m haigui graduates returned to China, official statistics show. This sizeable wave means that an overseas education no longer carries the same cachet that it once did. On job markets as well as on dating sites, people are much less likely to be impressed by a foreign education. Today, the average returnee from abroad gets a starting salary of about 12,800 yuan a month, only marginally higher than the 10,700 yuan for local graduates, according to New Oriental’s data. Many haigui do far worse, with some taking on delivery gigs. On one Chinese television show, a young woman claimed that her parents spent over 2m yuan to send her abroad, only for her to get a job that paid just 4,000 yuan a month. It would take her a century to save that much, she rued. One Chinese student, Ms Zou, pursuing a chemistry master’s degree at University College London, chose study abroad because she wanted to “see the world"; but she does not expect to gain an upper hand over home-grown graduates when she returns to China seeking a job in the chipmaking industry. Domestically educated graduates will have studied for three years
to get their master’s, compared with just one year for her. Students from China make up some 40% of Ms Zou’s class; elsewhere, the proportion can reach nine-tenths, which somewhat undermines the point that foreign universities are meant to be different from China’s. Among employers, foreign degrees no longer confer the same advantage. Short study durations and fairly low entry requirements mean that companies increasingly question the once gilt-edged reputation of a foreign education. Studying abroad does not automatically translate into an ability to fit into the workplace. Moreover, human-resource departments may also think that domestic graduates are “more obedient”, says Ms Zou, since they are untainted by Western liberal influence. Some provincial governments make it harder for overseas graduates to become civil servants. In 2024 the boss of Gree, an electronics conglomerate, said she didn’t hire haigui because they could be spies. Meanwhile, home universities look increasingly attractive. Chinese universities have shot up the international leaderboards. Peking University and Tsinghua University, the country’s two top schools, now rank 13th and 14th respectively in the QS World University Rankings. Universities belonging to the “985” and “211”, monikers for an elite handful of Chinese universities, are seen as stronger than many overseas institutions (though big names like Oxford, Cambridge and America’s Ivy League are still viewed as superior). In areas such as science and engineering, Chinese research excels. Tuition, typically a few thousand yuan per year at a public university, is substantially cheaper. Abroad, shrinking enrolment is now hurting some universities that had become overly reliant on Chinese students. In the 2024-25 academic year Chinese made up more than two-fifths of international students at the Russell Group of 24 top British universities. Many of them expanded master’s programmes to attract students from China, charging them fees far above those of home students. Faculties grew and new facilities were built. There was an “illusion of financial stability”, says Filippo Boeri, at City St George’s, University of London. But now universities are closing courses and laying off staff or asking them to take voluntary redundancy.
Chinese students drying up will deprive the West of valuable talent. It may also do no good for China. As the country opened up to the world, haigui brought home skills and knowledge acquired overseas. The group were key in helping the country to modernise and the economy to catch up (eight of the 21 current members of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo studied abroad). The international experience of the haigui has also helped Chinese firms seeking a foothold in foreign markets. When fewer turtles swim the seas, China will surely suffer too. ■ Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/china/2026/08/06/why-ever-fewer-young-chinese-study- abroad
To some, reviled former leaders don’t look so bad Young netizens mine the Cultural Revolution for tropes Aug 6th 2026 AMUCH-HERALDED film, “I Know Who You Are”, by one of China’s finest directors, Feng Xiaogang, proved a box-office flop when it was released in June. The film’s portrayal of how a neighbourly relationship in Beijing was distorted by the grim politics of the era of Mao Zedong, including the chairman’s vicious Cultural Revolution, may not have appealed to younger audiences unfamiliar with that turbulent time. Some people may have been put off by the Chinese title, “Zhua Tewu”, which means “Spycatching”, leading them to expect (wrongly) a drama leaden with propaganda. Getting the film to cinemas did not prove easy for Mr Feng. The launch had been expected in October 2025, but its political content may have prompted
censors to subject it to extra checks. At the end of the year an upsurge of online interest in one of Mr Feng’s earlier films, “Youth”, which was a big hit when released in 2017, may have complicated matters. Netizens’ lively discussion of that film, set in part during the Cultural Revolution, touched a nerve among officials. Certainly, the authorities do not like public hand-wringing about the Cultural Revolution. China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, is particularly bothered by the practice, which he calls “historical nihilism”: just listen to the official silence surrounding this year’s big anniversaries relating to that tumultuous decade, which began in May 1966 and ended with the death of Mao in September 1976. Mr Feng’s new film actually examines the Cultural Revolution far less punchily than did a popular TV series of the mid-1990s that was based on the same story. But what upset officials about netizens’ discussion of “Youth” was something else. To the limited extent that people are permitted to discuss the period, they must stick to the glib, official line that the Cultural Revolution was a “serious disaster” for which Mao’s wicked widow, Jiang Qing, and other members of the “Gang of Four”, were largely responsible. Odd and repugnant as it may seem to many older Chinese, let alone hyper- cautious cadres, netizens were recasting one of the four, Wang Hongwen, as a hero. By idolising Wang, they were prodding at the Communist Party in as discomfiting a way as dwelling on the killing of more than 1m people by Mao’s zealots and the persecution of many millions more (in Inner Mongolia, the government still gives small subsidies to disabled survivors of a pogrom by troops and Red Guard mobs in which, by the official count, about 16,000 people died and more than 120,000 were injured). To young Chinese with little knowledge of the suffering, Wang is an obvious candidate for reinvention as an internet meme. The former security guard at a textile factory was just 37 when plucked from the local leadership of a blue-collar Mao-worshipping faction to become the party’s vice-chairman in Beijing—Mao’s successor-in-waiting, many thought. To netizens, he seemed to be an underdog made good, with film-star looks and brimming with
admirable contempt for self-serving party bureaucrats (never mind that he had reputedly high-hogged it in the capital). Wang, who died in prison in 1992 while serving a life sentence, does not feature in “Youth”. But the actor who plays the protagonist, Huang Xuan, bears a resemblance to him. That was enough for online conspiracy theorists. One, in three videos on Bilibili, an online platform, argued that the film was laced with hidden references to the Cultural Revolution to portray it as a positive movement liberating the masses from the ruling class; the Gang of Four were blamed for atrocities actually committed by an embattled elite. The film’s screenwriter, Yan Geling, has called this absurd and said that she “hates the Cultural Revolution to death”. But the online videos garnered millions of views, with commenters posting showers of Cultural Revolution- era slogans such as “Long live the people!” and “Persist to the end!” Nor have Wang fans given up. To evade censors they refer to him by nicknames such as “Little Wang” or use Huang Xuan’s name instead. They interweave images of Wang with pictures of the actor and dub footage of Wang with poignant pop music, such as a song about someone wronged. Wang, then, may have become a symbol to the type of disgruntled young Chinese who vents online about the difficulty of finding work or an affordable house, or who talks about wanting to “lie flat”, a popular codeword for dropping out of the rat race. Apart from Wang’s good looks, it is his rebel, working-class streak the type finds alluring—damn the facts. In 2016 the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution with a commentary calling it “completely wrong in theory and practice”. This year state media outlets have said nothing. The death in April of Cui Gendi, Wang’s 86-year- old widow, passed unremarked in the press. Officials want to bury an extremely inconvenient part of the party’s history, but young Chinese are mining it for metaphor. ■ Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.
This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/china/2026/08/06/to-some-reviled-former-leaders-dont- look-so-bad