When can international students return to China? June 2021 Update

Hi, I am Rich – founder of China Admissions. We are an online platform for international students to apply to the Chinese universities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTc3-DhDy6w&ab_channel=RichinChina

Ever since 2020 when the coronavirus outbreak happened students have been shut outside of China and not been able to come back, with the exception of Korean students.

So it’s really difficult for students who are not able to come back to China and I totally understand what it’s like. There are so many students that are in difficult situations. It’s so difficult to be doing work if you are studying on line and maybe the internet in your country is not good, and then you see that China is very safe and there’s not many cases in China and it makes students really want to come back!

When do I expect International students to come back?

It’s basically going to be depend on two things.
1) The coronavirus situation is all around the world and in China and
2) The vaccination rates and how many people are vaccinated.

So I have some good news and bad news.

Recently, in China the vaccinations have been rapidly accelerating and there’s almost eight hundred million vaccinations. (This is the number of shots, not the total people). According to this, the vaccination rate in China should be nearly 100% within a few months which is a very very good news.

The bad news is that the coronavirus situation all around the world is still going on and in places like India and Brazil there are still a lot of cases.

So when students can come back depends on these two factors which are going in opposite directions. There’s more cases  and vaccinations are accelerating within China.

How do we know when students are going to come back? It is very difficult to tell because the situation is very uncertain.

So there’s a few different possibilities of what’s going to happen. In my personal opinion I think the coronavirus is here to stay. Based on what I’ve read about the coronavirus situation it seems like it’s not going to be totally eradicated anytime soon. It’s likely to continue long into the future and may never be eradicated and it may become like a seasonal flu that we get every year that just becomes less severe over time which is what happened with the Spanish Flu. It just started circulating people became less severe.

This is probably what will happen with this situation, but it’s very hard to know.

It is likely that China is not going to open up to every country in the world but in stages. It is most likely that students from the countries that have less cases and more vaccinations will be allowed to come back to China first

This has already happened to Korea last year and it’s probably what’s going to happen in the future so with countries like India it may be a long time before they can come, but other countries that may be a lot faster where they have very high vaccination rates and light cases for example like Israel.

It is very hard to speculate and is very hard to control and to know what’s going to happen because the situation is very unpredictable and this is really difficult for students because how do we know what to do and how do we know what’s the plan?

In my personal opinion we just have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best and in any situation will be happy.

It’s very hard for students who study online but we need to look at the opportunities and there are a lot of options available for us.

We can just continue to learn and just get ready because when the situation comes back, the new normal, then there’s going to be a lot more opportunities.

People are so ready to travel and so ready to do things. Things are going to be amazing when we can come back. We just have to get ready and prepare for that time.

So I hope this has been helpful for you guys here trying to make decisions and plan and I know the situation is not ideal.

If you have any questions or any comments about it just let me know in the comments below.

I really recommend this Chinese language program if you want to learn Chinese at this time. Beijing Language and Culture University has a very popular Chinese language program. You can learn more here.

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Some links from the video: Xinhua: One British entrepreneur’s business venture in China http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/10/c_137458624.htm

How to apply to Chinese universities on China Admissions: https://apply.china-admissions.com/search

French students experience studying online in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3ooqr8d3w&t=7s&ab_channel=ChinaAdmissions

Korean students can go back: https://www.china-admissions.com/blog/china-to-issue-visa-to-south-korean-students/

A Nature survey shows many scientists expect the virus that causes COVID-19 to become endemic, but it could pose less danger over time. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2