Analysis Of The Determinants Of Foreign Students In China

Recent years, China has witnessed the rising growth and great diversification of international students from all over the world. It comes to a question that by what factors drive this boom? This paper tries to answer this question by using empirical methods which based on gravity model. Our data consists of22countries’ international students coming to China from1997to2011. Our empirical results shows that the international students in China are attracted by the following factors: China’s increasing economic scale and its huge growth potential, China’s competitive level of science and education, mutual trade relationship between sourcing countries and China, mutual recognition of academic credentials and degrees, and whether the sourcing country belongs to Chinese culture circles, and so on. In contrast, the geological distance and some domestic major emergencies will hinder those international students from coming to China. Furthermore, we find out that students from developing and developed countries behave differently when facing the choice of destinations. The former put more consideration on China’s economic growth potential and educational level, while the latter are more affected by China’s domestic emergency factors.