Pan Qiao’an, an Italian student who has been studying China for four years, finally applied last year for a Chinese government scholarship to support International Students in China. As the Epidemic in mainland China slows down in the summer of 2020, she is looking forward to fulfilling her four-year dream of entering Zhejiang University in person and combining the profound Chinese Culture with her studies.
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 Communist authorities have not yet liberalized. Despite the opening of simplified visa applications for those who have received the Chinese vaccine on March 15, 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, following the outbreak of the Xin Guan (Chinese communist virus). 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 mainland China.” Joanne Pan 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 vaccines produced in mainland China 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 authorities, with many “take us back to The hashtags “Take Us Back To China” and “Take Us Back To School” (#TakeUsBackToChina and #TakeUsBackToSchool) have appeared on Twitter, including a group called “China International Student “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 was forced to delay his master’s studies and even his career plans because he was unable to take 3D images of the area with a drone.
“I can get vaccinated for mainland China and am willing to comply with all vaccination policies, and I am willing to cover all quarantine costs. But there is currently no (new) policy for international students.” 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.
The treatment of international higher education students by the Chinese Communist Party 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 the CCP’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 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, we are going back to mainland China.” So said the above medical student, who wished to remain anonymous only.
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