Shanghai's 70-day lockdown in late March has awakened many Chinese people's memories of the early days of the outbreak two years ago. Bart (pseudonym), who lives in Beijing, still remembers the Spring Festival in 2020, when a relative sent his children back to New York after the New Year's Eve dinner. Two years later, he has more friends who chose to leave China. , the popularity of immigration and studying abroad is heating up again.
In the past few months, the word "run" has become one of the most discussed buzzwords on the Chinese Internet. Because the Chinese pinyin "rùn" of "run" is the same as the English word "run", which means to run, it has been extended by many netizens as a synonym for running away, running away, or immigrating overseas. This also means that "immigrating overseas" has become a hot topic among Chinese people.
The 35-year-old Bart is a literary and artistic worker. He is planning to leave China in the second half of the year. He is dubbed "Master Runxue" by friends. In an interview with Lianhe Zaobao, he said that discussions about leaving China actually started after the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020.
He said that many of his relatives and friends lived and studied abroad. In the past, when they returned to China during the New Year's holiday, elders would always persuade their children to stay for a while before leaving, but the New Year's Eve dinner in 2020 changed the normal. , After a relative finished eating, he bought a plane ticket for the child and asked him to return to New York the next day.
Two years later, Barth said that since the Spring Festival this year, more friends around him have chosen to leave China to study and work overseas.
In fact, the Chinese social platform WeChat keyword search index also shows that since January this year, keyword searches related to "immigration" have gradually increased, reaching a peak in April and May.
Among them, on April 3, China announced that it "strictly adhere to the social cleanup and unswervingly." On that day, the overall search index for "immigration" on WeChat increased by 440% compared with the previous day, and the single-day search volume reached nearly 50 million; On March 17, the day Shanghai announced the unblocking, the search index for “immigration” increased by more than 471%, with more than 100 million searches per day.
In addition, Google Trends data also shows that in the past 90 days, the frequency and number of searches for "immigration" in mainland China have also increased significantly, reaching a peak on May 1. The top three related searches are "Japanese immigrants", "Australian immigrants" and "Singapore immigrants" in order.
When asked why he wanted to leave China, Bart said that including himself and those around him who made the same choice, most of them felt that staying in China would limit their career development and freedom of life.
Taking himself as an example, he said that in recent years, the subject matter of literary and artistic creation in China is limited, and the creation often needs to conform to the "main theme" before it can be approved. Therefore, he plans to go overseas to find a new way out in the second half of the year, but whether the trip can be carried out smoothly has become a major problem at present.
China's National Immigration Administration proposed in the middle of last month to strictly implement the "strict and strict entry-exit policy", strictly restrict the non-essential exit activities of Chinese citizens, and strictly approve and issue entry-exit documents. According to the official post-mortem explanation, going abroad to return to school and go to school is regarded as one of the "essential activities", and the passport and documents can be accepted and approved in a timely manner, and the procedures for going abroad can be processed.
A Beijing study-abroad agency, who did not want to be named, revealed to this newspaper that just because attending school is considered a "necessary activity" to go abroad, "studying abroad" has become a "stepping stone" for immigrants.
He said that in the past two years, the number of cases of whole families studying abroad with their children has gradually increased. After the release of the strict control over exit policy, more parents choose to apply for "study abroad" with their children. "The child is studying for an undergraduate (university), and the parents are studying for an MBA (Master of Business Administration), which is actually a gradual arrangement to immigrate overseas."
In addition to this phenomenon, he also observed that the rate of studying abroad at a young age has increased over the past year. "In the past, only high school students went abroad to study in college, but now many of them go abroad for junior high school and high school."
Yu Xiaolu, an expert consultant of the Independent Educational Consults Association (IECA), has more than 10 years of experience in guiding study abroad applications in China. The main cases of her counseling are applying to boarding schools in the United States.
In an interview with this newspaper, she said that according to her observation, the number of applications for studying abroad in 2020 will be reduced by about 30% to 40% compared with the past. But this year, it has returned to the state before the epidemic, especially after April and May, the number of consultations is even higher than before the epidemic.
Yu Xiaolu pointed out that in the past, parents mostly considered their children to be young, so they would choose to stay in China to study first, and then apply for studying abroad when they were in college. Among the people who have this consideration, most children with Chinese passports will go to private bilingual schools; those with foreign passports will go to international schools.
However, in the two years since the outbreak of the epidemic, affected by the double reduction plan and the government's supervision of private schools, many places announced last year to reduce the proportion of students in private compulsory education schools, of which no more than 5% in the province and no more than 15% in the county. % etc.
The Financial Times also reported last week that the British Chamber of Commerce in China estimated that as many as 60% of foreign teachers will leave this year, influenced by China's epidemic prevention and regulatory policies.
Yu Xiaolu said that due to these factors, the relevant domestic teachers have weakened significantly, and many private schools have also begun to require students to take the high school entrance examination, which is not in line with the expectations of parents who plan to let their children receive bilingual education before studying abroad, so they decided to advance. Send children abroad.
In addition to prospective students, there are also "returnees" who have recently chosen to return to live overseas.
Barth mentioned that among the friends who have recently left China, many of them have long-term experience of living, studying or traveling abroad. These people are about 25 to 45 years old, and their financial resources allow, so they can quickly adapt to life abroad.
He said that for these people, living in China and living abroad are like two different dishes. At the age of ten, when I have the ability, I choose to eat that 'appetite' dish."
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