Why Study in China? - Reasons and Current Situation
- 1. Why Study in China?
- 1.1 The rise of China in the world
- 1.2 The increase of conflict and cooperation between China and the world
- 1.3 China is “the first ever non-western super power in recent history”
- 1.4 Improvement of Chinese education
- 1.5 The gap between China you study at western university and China you study at Chinese university
- 1.6 China’s big influence on Japanese politics, economy, and society (reason for Japanese)
- 1.7 The rise of Asia
- 2. Current situation of “Study in China”
- 3. Conclusion
As I am going to attend the graduate school in China, some of my friends were surprised to hear that and asked me “why China?” This is maybe because Japanese people tend to consider only western schools like the ones in the US and the UK when studying abroad. However, I, as a person who has already studied abroad in China before and tries to see the rise of China with an objective perspective, even feel surprised that other people are surprised to see me going to a Chinese graduate school haha. Well, I just feel like “why are you surprised when I’m going to THAT China?” In fact, the number of international students in China is rapidly increasing as the power of China is also dramatically rising in recent years: now that China, not the UK, is the second most popular destination for international students in the world. Surprising?
It is true that China is still a developing power and a degree from Chinese universities has not completely gained good international reputation yet in terms of people’s impression on that. But given China’s current and future influence/power, I believe studying in China would be such a valuable and important experience.
That’s why in this article I would like to write about “Why study in China? ~Reasons and Current Situation.”
1. Why Study in China?
1.1 The rise of China in the world
The biggest reason why more and more international students recently go to China to study must be the dramatic rise of China in the world. After the World War II and Civil War in China, China was in such an unstable situation in terms of its politics, economy, and society. However, Chinese economy experienced the miraculous growth following the Reform and Opening-Up policy led by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Chinese economy grew about 10% every year since then for almost 30 years and the China’s GDP jumped up to $8,227 billion US dollars in 2012 from $150 billion in 1978. This is like China’s GDP in 2012 is 55 times higher than the one in 1978! As a result, China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s GDP in 2010 and became the second largest economy in the world. Economic reports from various institutions also predict that United States’ GDP will be surpassed by China’s GDP by 2030, which obviously means China becomes the world largest economic power.
China dramatically increased its military budget as well just like the chart above following the great economic growth. And in 2017 China supposedly spent $228 billion US dollars for its military, which put China to No.2 in the military expenditure ranking in the world. Since the military budget of Japan was just $45.4 billion in the same year, China’s military budget was about five times more than the Japanese one. On the other hand, US used $610 billion for its military in 2017 so that China’s budget is still just about 40% of the US one.
In addition, China is going to become the second biggest contributor for United Nations’ budget from 2019-2021 as now China can provide more money than the previous second contributor, Japan. Although China is required to pay more to the UN because of its economic growth, Japan is asked to pay less than before due to its stagnant economy. It is also assumed that China would take bigger influence on the UN over time as China is expected to spend more for the UN with its still increasing economic power.
I believe there are many other things to mention regarding the rise of China, but I just stop writing about them here because there are just so many haha.
Anyway, what I would like to emphasize is that China is rapidly rising in various kind of fields and that fact is making China one of the most powerful and important countries in the world.
1.2 The increase of conflict and cooperation between China and the world
As Chinese international influence increased, international society experienced a variety of conflict and cooperation with China. As of August 2018, the trade war between the US and China is the easy example of conflict. The trade war was triggered maybe by the character of President Trump and his administration, but the fact that China developed so fast to even surpass the US cannot be ignored as a reason behind this issue. Other issues such as South and East China Sea, Taiwan, territorial dispute between China and India, human rights also exemplify conflicts between China and the world. On the other hand, China commits to many international cooperation on various topics: they are, for example, Paris agreement on climate change, One Belt One Road initiative (some countries see this as a tension), North Korean issue (some countries may disagree China is cooperating on this), BRICS, Forum on China-Africa cooperation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, G20, ASEAN+neighboring countries cooperation, initiative to ratify free trade treaties such as RCEP, and so on. In other words, the relationship between China and the world is getting more complicated and important as China rises.
I believe it is important for us to improve existing cooperation for better mutual prosperity and use existing conflict/issue as a chance to learn each other and seek solutions for peace between us.
1.3 China is “the first ever non-western super power in recent history”
In recent history, the nations that strongly influenced/influence the world order with its dominant economic and military power were all from the west. The emergence of super power first started with the British Empire before WWII and after that its power shifted to the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War structure. Now that the US is considered as a sole super power in the world ever since the end of the Cold War. All these super powers somehow looked similar in the sense that they are basically white and Christian dominant countries (political system in the Soviet Union was different though). However, the country that is going to possess the most powerful economy and military and become a new super power in near future, China, is completely different from previous super powers. First of all, China is an Asian country with majority Han people and many other ethnic groups. Chinese mindset is supposedly influenced by the teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Also, Chinese political economy adopts a kind of hybrid system of Communism and Capitalism, which is very rare and unique in the current world. China holds its own super long history too as the Chinese civilization.
What would the world look like if the country like China became a super power and strongly influenced the world order and political economy? What would China think and do as a super power? Or is it likely to happen that the US and China fight over hegemony as China seizes super power (Power Transition Theory)?
The country that is likely to bring big influence to the world in good and bad ways is the first ever non-western super power in recent history and most of us don’t have a good understanding on that unique and difficult country yet, China. Therefore, no matter whether you like China or don’t like China, it is critical for us, the world, to study and understand China deeper.
1.4 Improvement of Chinese education
Even though I feel the international reputation on Chinese education is not that high yet in terms of people’s impression on that, performance of Chinese universities in world universities rankings is obviously getting better. For example, according to the World Universities Ranking 2018 released by the Times Higher Education, top Chinese universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University were respectively ranked as 27thand 30th best in the world. Since the best university in Japan, University of Tokyo, is just ranked as 46th, it seems like Chinese universities are better than Japanese ones at least in the ranking (sometime University of Tokyo has higher rank than Chinese universities, this depends on which ranking you look at). THE Asian Universities Ranking 2018 also shows that China is doing better than Japan: Peking University is the 3rd best and Tsinghua University is the 2nd best in Asia while University of Tokyo and Kyoto respectively just got 8th and 11th places...
Not only the most famous Chinese universities such as Peking University or Tsinghua University, but also other universities are gaining better international reputation. For example, according to the World Universities Ranking 2018 made by the Academic Ranking of World Universities(ARWU), 62 Chinese universities ranked in top 500, which is the second best just behind the US. And 3 universities even made it to top 100. It’s kind of sad that Japan holds only 16 universities in top 500, but at least the ranks of University of Tokyo and Kyoto are better than Chinese universities so far in this ranking.
Just as I explained above, international reputation on Chinese education is progressively improving in various World Universities Rankings regardless of the impression that degrees from Chinese universities are not that valuable yet.
1.5 The gap between China you study at western university and China you study at Chinese university
When I considered studying China more, I wondered if I should go to “world best universities in the west” like the ones in Ivy League or just go to universities in China without caring about its international reputation. Then I finally decided to attend a graduate school in China. This was because I believe there is a gap between China you study at western university and China you study at Chinese university. Well I just feel studying China in China is much more interesting and valuable based on my studying abroad experiences both in the US and China. Of course it’s also good to study China at western universities because you may be able to gain a more objective perspective on China by staying outside of that. However, I still believe (at least) Japanese people can understand China better by actually studying in China since Japanese people tend to share similar sort of ideas on China with the western countries. Even if you choose to be in China, you can always learn objective perspectives just through Internet or books. Also, classes on China would be only chance for you to learn about China in western universities. Of course you could find Chinese students or become friends with them. However, Chinese students/people in the West tend to have more international ideas so that it wouldn’t be easy for you to understand more Chinese Chinese ideas. But if you are in China, you can easily deepen your understanding on China not only through classes but also through everything in your daily life. Studying in China is so valuable just because China is so unique and different from other countries (especially western countries). As people say it is better to see once than to hear a hundred times (see is believing), if you really want to understand more real China, I would strongly recommend you to get into China and feel/learn over there instead of just hearing Chinese stories in the West.
1.6 China’s big influence on Japanese politics, economy, and society (reason for Japanese)
China always matters a lot to Japanese politics, economy, and society. For example, Japanese military budget exceeded ¥5000 billion Japanese yen (about $46 billion US dollars) for the first time in 2016 and this was without doubt affected by the rise of China and higher tension over South and East China Sea. Of course the North Korea issue affected the increase as well, but it’s assumed that China even holds a big influence over the issue which is so important to Japan. China is also an essential factor in other issues/things such as US military base issue in Okinawa, Japan’s international political and economic strategy, domestic political situation in Japan (like what kind of party and policy are supported by the public), Japan’s initiative to promote its status in the UN, historical issues, and so on.
In terms of economy, China is one of the most important trading partners to Japan. According to the statistics on trade in 2017, Japan imported the most from China: 24.4% of all imported goods to Japan came from China while the second biggest exporter to Japan, the US, only occupied 10.7%. And Japan exported almost same amount to China and the US, respectively 19.0% and 19.4%, which makes them the biggest importer from Japan. In other words, one fourth of all goods Japan buys from the world comes from China, one fifth of all goods Japan sells to the world goes to China.
Increasing number of Chinese tourists to Japan is spending so much money in Japan too. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization and the Japan Tourism Agency, in 2017 7.35 million Chinese tourists, which is top occupying 25% of all tourists, visited Japan and spent 1694.6 billion Japanese yen (about $15 billion US dollars), which is top occupying 38.4% of all the money spent by tourists.
In Japanese society, for example, there were 107000 Chinese students out of 267000 all the international students in 2017. China sends the most international students, which accounts for 40% among all the international students. Chinese residents are the most as well among all the foreign residents in Japan, occupying 30%.
Therefore, China is an extremely important country (at least) for Japan as China is deeply involved with Japanese politics, economy, and society.
1.7 The rise of Asia
Many economic predictions imply that Asian countries will play more and more important and powerful roles in world economy. According to the statistics by the World Bank, for example, nominal GDPs of Asian countries (include Australia, New Zealand, and Russia) accounted for almost 40% of the entire world GDP in 2017.
And the report by the PwC also predicted that there would be 4 Asian countries in top 5 economy by GDP (PPP) in 2030. Top 5 are China, the US, India, Japan, and Indonesia. If you look at top 30, half of the countries would be from Asia. Moreover, India is expected to surpass GDP (PPP) of the US and become the second world largest economy by 2050.
As you can see, Asian countries will be such important actors in near future world. And China is at the center of that region.
Asia is geographically vast and each country has diverse political economy systems and social situations. This is why it would be beneficial to study in China, which is the center of Asia, and interact with people from Asia as well as those interested in the region.
2. Current situation of “Study in China”
Because of many reasons to study in China as mentioned above, China is actually turning into more and more popular destination for international students in recent years. As a matter of fact, even though the number of international students in China in 2002 was only 85000, that rapidly increased to 489200 in 2017. This is 576% of increase! As a result, now that China is the second biggest country to host international students.
The rise of China as a potential super power and a popular destination to study abroad helped create some ambitious scholarship projects which aim at bringing together more brilliant people from world to China. The significant examples are the Yenching Academy of Peking University and the Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University. Both of them are one year master programs in English and offer full-scholarship (ex. tuition, accommodation, life stipend, etc) to all the students. They both established in 2014, but the number of applications are dramatically increasing every year. Although the scholarship are offered to only about 110-150 people each year, now that they accept about 4000+ applications from all over the world.
There are also other scholarship programs related to China such as the Chinese government scholarship, the Baixian Institute, and the Campus Asia programs (U-Tokyo, Peking University, Waseda University...), etc.
In conclusion, studying in China is getting more and more popular in the world. However, the number of Japanese students in China is not really increasing so that I feel the presence of Japanese students in China is not that high. For example, given the size and importance of Japan, Japanese people are under-represented at the Yenching Academy and the Schwarzman Scholars (but this is not the programs' fault).
＊In other articles, I will write more in detail about the Yenching Academy and the Schwarzman Scholars
3. Conclusion
Even though I ended up writing so long, how were the background and current situation regarding “study in China?”
China is very unique and strange country in good and bad sense. I listed up the rise of China in various fields toward superpower as a reason why the number of international students in China is increasing. On the other hand, Chinese inland still holds many poor areas. In other words, China has two faces, one is as a developed country, another is as a developing country. China also adopts a hybrid system of Communism and Capitalism for its political economy where not that much information is available for general public. Well, China is strange and difficult to understand...
However, it’s also true that this kind of country is rising as dramatic as it may exceed the political and economic power of the US and if so, China would strongly influence Japan and the world. The relationship between Japan and China isn’t that stable because of various issues they clash on over time. But, China will become an extremely important country for Japan and the world no matter whether you like China or not. This is why the big projects such as the Yenching Academy or the Schwarzman Scholars kicked off recently. I believe as a Japanese that there should be more people from Japan, which really needs to understand China well as a neighboring country, to learn together and get connected with the people from China and the world and make challenging actions for better.
In the next article, I will write about the Schwarzman Scholars at the Tsinghua University, which is one of the best programs to study in China. The Schwarzman Scholars is an one year master program in China and the students receive full-scholarship.
Website of the Schwarzman Scholars:
https://www.schwarzmanscholars.org
If you are interested in the program, don’t forget that the application deadline for the class of 2020 (starting at September 2019) is coming at September 27th 2018!
#China #StudyInChina #ChineseGraduateSchool #YenchingAcademy #SchwarzmanScholars
