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Number of Americans studying in mainland China falls sharply, but Chinese students still flock to US
- US students returned to Hong Kong and Taiwan after the pandemic’s first year, but only 211 studied in the mainland during the 2021-22 academic year
- China continues to dominate the country-of-origin rankings at US colleges and universities
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Bochen Hanin Washington
Tallies of Americans studying in Hong Kong and Taiwan recovered slightly after the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the number of American students in mainland China plummeted to the lowest in over a decade, according to new data released on Monday.
Only 211 Americans studied in mainland China during the 2021-22 school year, according to the 2023 version of an annual US government-funded study by the Institute of International Education (IIE). In contrast, from 2018 to 2019, there were more than 11,000 American students in the mainland.
The same study showed that Chinese students continue to vastly outnumber any other foreign group in the US. During the 2022 to 2023 school year, 289,526 Chinese studied in the US, a slight decrease from the 290,086 during the previous school year.
Mainland China’s continued dominance of the country-of-origin rankings comes amid concerns that Chinese students are subjected to greater scrutiny at US borders.
According to the Chinese embassy in Washington, during the past two-plus years, at least 70 Chinese students with legal visas were “interrogated, harassed and deported” by US law enforcement at their port of entry.
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