Since the Chinese government has tightened student visas since the Epidemic, many foreign students have been forced to stay in their Home countries and continue their studies with online classes, even medical students have had to watch online classes to learn suturing surgery and their careers have been greatly affected.
As the epidemic in China slows down in the summer of 2020, she is looking forward to fulfilling her four-year dream of studying in China by setting foot in Zhejiang University and combining her research with the profound Chinese Culture.
Four years of studying China, but not setting foot on Chinese soil
But everything was in place, and all that was missing was the east wind. For Qiaoan Pan, the one thing she lacked was a student visa, which the Chinese government has not yet liberalized. China has imposed full border controls since the outbreak of the Communist Party virus, and despite the March 15 opening of simplified visa applications for those who have been vaccinated in China, the Chinese border is still open only for business travel, foreign spouses and children, and those who come to China for humanitarian purposes, and only for Korean students. Foreign students like Qiaoan Pan are still confined to their own country and cannot enter China to continue their studies.
“It feels strange, even a little ironic, that I studied China studies but have never been to China.” Pan Qiao’an told reporters, “China is like a dream for me, but now I feel desperate because I’m tired and sometimes I just want to give up, but I do spend a lot of Time and energy for this and I don’t want to give up this scholarship opportunity.”
She is not the only student affected. According to the Institute of International Education (IIE), nearly 500,000 International Students are headed to China for the 2019 academic year, the third-largest destination that year after the U.S. and the U.K. But all of these international students are facing serious challenges in China due to the new crown epidemic, and are only able to participate in their own countries Online lectures, including time differences, hands-on courses and research were problematic.
Medical students lacking clinical experience
“All we get are instructional videos about surgical procedures, do you understand them? Study Medicine but watch instructional videos about suturing? There is no gross anatomy, no physician guidance.” So said a third-year medical school student from India at Jilin University, who declined to be named for fear of school censorship.
The student told the station that practical experience is more important than theoretical knowledge to become a doctor. But they have been out of the lab for more than a year, which means these medical students have completed about ten medical subjects in two semesters without any practical or clinical experience, and he fears that his medical degree will not be recognized in India because of the lack of clinical experience.
He told reporters that the school had just started surgical online courses in the past two days and showed screenshots of instructional videos with dialogue pop-ups popping up next to the screen with students’ responses, “Teacher, we can’t see the videos or hear you.”
Because of the poor learning quality of the medical school’s online courses, another fourth-year medical student who did not want to disclose the school, Mina Wang, told reporters directly that her surgery online course ended after two hours of the first class due to poor video and sound quality, and the school was informed today (16) that this semester’s courses will be directly canceled, and she is currently left with only Chinese classes.
Wang Mina showed this station the school notice, which reads, “Because the clinical medicine course requires classes and apprenticeships at affiliated hospitals, online classes do not have the conditions for teaching clinical medicine courses, it was decided to cancel all medical courses for the class of 2017 this semester, and classes will start again when everyone returns to school.”
Study and research restricted career planning, mental health affected
The Beijing authorities are now preparing intensively for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, while ambitiously selling Chinese-made vaccines to the world, but the delay in opening up student visas has sparked discontent among foreign students, and many international students who have been denied entry into China and are stranded overseas have flocked to social media platforms to express their anxiety and frustration with the Chinese Communist Party authorities, with many “Take us back to China” and “Take us back to China” tweets appearing on Twitter. “The hashtags “Take Us Back To China” and “Take Us Back To School” (#TakeUsBackToChina and #TakeUsBackToSchool) have appeared on Twitter, including a Twitter account called One of the Twitter accounts, China International Student, published an open letter from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a video appealing for an updated return date.
In addition, the tweets included financial challenges, course delays and even mental health issues faced by international students. Damien, a Pakistani student studying at Taiyuan University of Technology, told the station that his geography major requires people to be in specific geographic locations. He was unable to physically be there, but his master’s research and even his career plans were delayed because he was unable to take 3D images of the area with a drone.
“I can get the Chinese vaccine and I am willing to follow all the vaccination policies, and I am willing to cover all the quarantine costs. But there is no (new) international student policy at the moment.” Frustrated, he said, “I feel desperate and blind about the future, and I can’t apply for further study or for a job.”
Curtis S. Chin (also known as Chen Tianzong), a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank with a Chinese background, has written to the South China Morning Post to speak out on behalf of these students. He said the quality and relatively low cost of many Chinese higher education institutions are the main attraction for foreign students, and that scholarships and other support as part of China’s “soft power” also attract students from the Indo-Pacific region.
China’s treatment of international higher education students during the pandemic represents a “failure of soft power,” he told the station.
He noted that international students deserve more compassion, communication and equal treatment, and that China’s bureaucracy and lack of transparency have hit many students from developing countries and regions in Asia and Africa hard. The students all stressed to reporters in interviews that they were reluctant to reveal all of their information, and that even though they were unhappy with Beijing’s policies in their hearts, they were concerned that their future paths of study in China would be limited as a result.
“After all, it is China that we are going back to.” So said the medical student, who wished to remain anonymous.
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