Openness needed for Xi Jinping’s goal to bring 50,000 young Americans to China: talent expert
Zweig said students, like him, who went to study in China before the country’s opening up to the outside world saw that “times were pretty tough” then and there had been great changes since that time.
“That whole group of people knows the changes that have happened and we support an open China. Our commitment is to an open China that engages with the world and our own governments engaging with China. That’s what we support.”
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Before that, experts on both sides had warned that a years-long, pandemic-induced hiatus in such interactions had bred mutual misunderstanding, suspicion, blame and invective between the two powers.
Amid an economic slowdown and rising tensions with the West, there have been growing questions about whether China is losing its lustre as a favourable place for foreign students and investors.
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The number of Chinese studying in the US has also fallen, although much less dramatically and Chinese students continue to outnumber any other foreign group in the United States. During the 2022-23 school year, 289,526 Chinese studied in the US, down 0.2 per cent from the previous year and a third year in a row of declines – according to an annual US government-funded study by the Institute of International Education.
Zweig, who is now vice-president of CCG, said it was important that Xi called for China to attract more American students “but there also needs to be an effort on the Chinese side to say let’s have a dialogue about this”.
He added that China had not seen a rebound that it had hoped for in students from other parts of the world.
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Wang Huiyao, founder and president of CCG, said it would be a challenge to meet the 50,000 US student target given the tense geopolitical situation.
But as the world’s second-largest economy, China still had a great need for global talent and Xi’s announcement sent a signal to local authorities, universities and companies across China to welcome American young people.
“If everybody is mobilised to work on the American counterparts, I think it could be not that difficult,” he said.