Foreign Students May Return to China by September!

At the regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held on July 15, a reporter from the Indian Broadcasting Corporation asked the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about visas for Indian students to China and direct flights between China and India. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded that, positive progress has been made recently for Indian students to return to China.

The authorities of both countries will continue to maintain close communication and strive for the early return of the first batch of Indian students to resume classes in China.

Large-scale Return of Students to Depend on Domestic Epidemic Situation

According to data from the Ministry of Education, there were 492,185 international students in Chinese universities in 2018. Most of them were from developing countries in Asia and Africa. After visa processing was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID epidemic, many students had to take classes online. The difficulties included not only the obstacles of jet lag and network delay, but also the limitations of online learning, especially for polytechnic and medical students. For more than two years, international students have been applying in various ways to return. But the process has only accelerated until February of 2022.

According to the South China Morning Post, foreign diplomatic missions in China have made it a priority to speed up the return of international students. In mid-June, India's new ambassador, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, had discussed the return of Indian students during his first courtesy meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing. According to the Hindustan Times, more than 23,000 Indian students were stranded in their home country, and more than half of them wanted to return to China to complete their studies. Over half of those students were studying medicine in China.

The South China Morning Post also said that, currently the return of international students to China is still in a small-scale trial model. Large-scale opening up will only be implemented when the domestic epidemic slows down.

But there is still good news, a few days ago, some international students said on social media that, they had received emails from several universities including Tianjin University, asking about the list of students willing to return in the near future. 

China has begun accepting foreign students from all over the world to return with conditions in April this year, if the domestic outbreak in China is further controlled, then more international students are expected to return to China and the number may reach its peak before the start of the semester on September 1.

An e-mail sent by the embassy in the UK to international students, published on foreign social media, about visas for them to return in the coming autumn, showed that “China is speeding up its opening-up to international students. With the recent increase in international flights and the relaxation of prevention and control measures, it is expected that more international students will return to China before the end of the summer vacation in early September.”

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