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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Targeted abroad and shunned at home: Chinese overseas students caught
in limbo
By Joyce Jiang, CNN
Updated:
11:08 PM EDT, Sat September 13, 2025
Source: CNN
For Chinese students, a degree from a US university was once considered
a “golden ticket” to coveted jobs back home. But many are now
finding that geopolitics is blunting their ambitions.
The Trump administration’s threat of visa cancellations – later
shelved after a trade-truce phone call between the US president and
Chinese leader Xi Jinping in early June – has compounded already
swirling uncertainty for Chinese students in the US.
And at home, some graduates are finding their experience abroad is
raising red flags with employers, who are increasingly casting a
suspicious eye over graduates trained at foreign universities
worldwide.
With their parents footing the hefty bill, some Chinese students are
asking if studying abroad is now worth it, especially when the domestic
jobs market seems to be favoring homegrown talent.
Lian, a 24-year-old master’s degree graduate from southeastern China
who spent three years studying in the US, had dreams of working on Wall
Street – until his student visa was abruptly revoked last July.
Lian, who studied Economic Statistics at a Chinese university, lost his
visa under a legacy ban from President Donald Trump’s first term,
which effectively denies US visas for Chinese students and researchers
from universities believed to be linked to the Chinese military.
The move stranded Lian in China during his summer internship, forcing
him to dive into the “rat race” of the domestic jobs market.
None of his 70-something applications to state-backed banks and
financial firms landed him a role, with most not even passing the
initial CV screenings, Lian noted.
“There are likely political sensitivities at play,” he said, asking
CNN not to disclose which Chinese university he studied at because of
the sensitivities of the subject.
Lian thinks his experience in the US hindered his entry into the public
sector – and made applying for a role in a private company
unexpectedly challenging.
“Being caught up in the dispute between the two countries just left
you helpless,” said Lian, whose job-hunting finally paid off in March
with an offer from a private firm in Shanghai.
Spy concerns as a ‘social norm’
China’s job market – in both the private and public sectors –
isn’t specifically shunning graduates from the US only, but a broader
group of foreign degree holders, even though they are increasingly
choosing to come back.
Since Xi took office in 2013, the annual number of overseas returnees
has steadily increased from about 350,000 to 580,000 in 2019, before
surpassing 1 million in 2021, according to data from the Ministry of
Education and the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based
think tank.
But not all Chinese companies gave them a rousing reception at a time
of intense nationalism and national security suspicions under Xi.
In late April, Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China’s home appliances
giant Gree Electric told a shareholder meeting that the company “will
never use any returnees because there could be spies among them” –
a comment criticized on social media and for “stigmatizing” and
“stereotyping” the returning cohort.
The “spy suspicion” – a paranoia usually found in state-backed
firms – is especially jarring coming from a prominent private
business leader. And it adds insult to injury for Chinese overseas
graduates like Lian, who say they already feel unwelcome in China’s
public sector.
Since 2023, multiple provinces, including arguably the most
liberal-minded Guangdong in southeastern China and major cities like
Beijing, have barred foreign degree holders from signing up to the
“Xuandiaosheng” program, a government recruitment initiative that
selects elite graduates to groom as future senior cadres for the
government and the ruling Communist Party.
In the same year, nearly half of all Chinese overseas students sought
to enter state-backed firms or government organs – places offering
“iron rice bowl” jobs, coveted for their perceived security in a
sputtering economy – according to a co-released by Chinese Global
Youth Summit and Liepin, a major online recruitment platform in China.
“The public sector is becoming less welcoming to overseas
graduates,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan
Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He
pointed to widespread national security concerns as a key driver.
Wu explained that a climate of paranoia surrounding espionage has
become a “social norm” in China, largely thanks to a social media
campaign by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s powerful
civilian spy agency, which regularly tells citizens that foreign spies
are everywhere.
Overseas graduates, in particular, have long been seen by the MSS as
“easy targets” to be recruited by foreign spy agencies, state media
said.
A recent series of propaganda videos published by the authority’s
social media account includes that details how a Chinese man was lured
by a foreign spy during his doctoral study abroad and ended up helping
them gather classified national secrets.
An ‘inward-looking’ China
For some Chinese employers, hiring domestic graduates not only means
fewer security worries – they’re also cheaper and a better fit for
the local culture and market.
Yuan Xin, a career development consultant in Shanghai, said some
Chinese companies prefer more “cost-effective” domestic students
perceived to have a stronger work ethic and a better grasp of the local
market.
“From what we’ve seen, most students who return after a one-year
master’s program indeed don’t have strong study skills and their
work skills are just like that,” said Yuan, arguing the “screening
mechanism” for domestic postgraduate programs is more rigorous than
those used abroad.
In China, students must pass a highly competitive national postgraduate
entrance exam and then study for at least two years before landing a
master’s degree.
Master’s degree holders have long dominated the returnee landscape,
accounting for nearly 80% of all returnees last year, according to an
annual survey by Zhilian Zhaopin, a leading recruitment platform in
China.
Yuan said graduates from Western countries, where work-life balance is
highly valued, “may not quite fit” the domestic workplace culture,
where “996” schedules – from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week
– are common.
The widespread belief that overseas graduates aren’t as committed or
capable as local ones strikes Ezio Duan as a “stereotype,” which he
said had a “real impact” on his job search last October.
Duan studied communication in the US for both his bachelor’s and
master’s degrees, and said he only landed three offers from around
400 formal job applications. Similar complaints about the
overgeneralization are widely shared by other returned postgrads
online.
Duan, who studied in the US for five years and is focused on private
firms in China, views the “widespread pressure of long working
hours” at home as “a real problem.” However, Lian, who was open
to working in state-backed corporations after a three-year stint in the
US, said he “won’t be very resistant” to workplace culture back
home.
But even the hardest-working Chinese overseas graduates may find it
difficult to overcome the shift in attitudes among domestic employers.
Wu, a scholar of Chinese public policy, says employers have become more
reluctant to hire overseas graduates like Duan and Lian under Xi’s
“inward-looking” policies.
“(Xi) aims to build a relatively closed system as there’s a major
narrative that he sees as a harsh reality – China-US rivalry,” Wu
said.
Wu said the “inward-looking” tendency has become clearer to the
public since 2018, when Xi scrapped presidential term caps, and since
he has beefed up domestic “self-reliance and security” amid a
China-US trade war.
“The emphasis on internal stability and control has, in many ways,
taken precedence over previous commitments to reform and openness,”
said Wu, noting that overseas students are a key embodiment of
China’s “opening door” policy.
“Those advantages we thought we had six years ago have completely
eroded over the past few years,” said communications graduate Duan.
“That’s something I really didn’t expect.”
This article has been updated.
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