Students at the Nexus Between the Chinese Diaspora and Internationalisation of Higher Education: The Role of Overseas Students in China’s Strategy of Soft Power

Abstract

In recent years, an increasingly assertive People's Republic of China (PRC) leadership has sought to extend the PRC's influence globally. To this end, it has developed diverse strategies ranging from soft power to more coercive means. The more visible strategies include the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Dream, and 'wolf warrior' diplomacy. At the soft power end of the spectrum, Chinese overseas students are at the nexus between two strategies of soft power -the Chinese diaspora and the internationalisation of higher education. While there is an established literature analysing China's soft power worldwide, relatively little has been done on the role of higher education, particularly where this concerns overseas Chinese students. The article will examine China's use of overseas students to project its soft power. It then identifies the strategies that support this, viz. ideological and political education to prepare young people for this role and, once overseas, an appeal to a conception of the Chinese diaspora, as well as the organisations (e.g. embassies and student associations) that form potential channels to students and monitor and support them in their role.

Education as a soft power resource: A systematic review

“…China. China as one of the major powers in the world has also prioritised the IHE for national pride, technological advancement, and economic development [ 65 , 66 ]. To promote national pride, government of China is using educational diplomacy to spread Chinese language, culture and state narratives.…”

“…Conversely, China is getting benefits being a sender country as well. Through its policy of Internationalization of Higher Education, China has well designed its foreign policy goals and prepared its students as Chinese ambassadors who go overseas for studies [ 66 ]. Furthermore, Martin and Elias [ 68 ] analyzed the China-Africa educational cooperation framework and concluded that Beijing's main objective behind this partnership is to achieve geo-economic and geopolitical objectives in the region.…”

Evaluation of Usability for Interdisciplinary Teaching Module for Enhancement of High-order Thinking Skills among University Students

“…Research has shown that Chinese college students exhibit minimal gains in critical thinking skills after four years of tertiary education (Liu et al, 2021). This deficiency is often attributed to the predominant reliance on rote learning and the lack of pedagogical environments that encourage critical and creative thinking (Guan, 2021). Furthermore, quantitative assessments indicate a decline in higher-order thinking abilities among Chinese students post-admission, highlighting the urgent need for educational reform (Yu, 2019).…”

Emigrate out of National Borders, Immigrate into Diasporic Spaces

“…Larner (2015) identifies the increasing internationalisation of the academic labour market, proposing that diasporic academics have become central to the creation of global knowledge networks. Recently, Brooks and Waters (2021) and Han and Tong (2021) have argued that international students are part of the diaspora formation that participates in global knowledge circulation and reinvents the notion of brain drain. International students, simultaneously migrants and students, interact with various groups of people and communities across a myriad of social spaces.…”