China is the world's largest source of international students, But amid domestic reforms, ambition and investment, is the overseas education bubble about to burst?

The Welsh city of Bangor, between the shores of the Menai Straits and the mountains of Snowdonia, is renowned for its ancient buildings and picture-postcard scenery. Eight thousand kilometers to the east, amid the gleaming towers and concrete ring roads of Beijing, Luna Wu is keen to put Bangor on the map for another reason.

"With the growth of higher education in China, Bangor University made a strategic decision to work with reputable Chinese institutions to raise Bangor University's profile in China, attract high-caliber Chinese students, develop joint research projects and ease the way for Bangor students to study in China," she says.

Wu, Bangor University's chief representative in Beijing, is not alone in wanting to forge links with the country. Hundreds of higher education institutions in the UK are tapping into the world's largest source of internationally mobile students, and their efforts are paying off.

In January, the Higher Education Statistics Authority in the UK said more first-year students from China enrolled at British universities than those from all European Union countries combined. The authority says 58,810 Chinese undergraduates started studying in Britain last year, compared with 57,190 students from the continent.

The number of Chinese students in the UK has not gone unnoticed. In February, the UK Higher Education Funding Council published a report that underlines how highly reliant universities are on Chinese postgraduates. One medium to long-term challenge, it said, is that China wants to be an international education hub and that growth rates in the number of international students in the country are increasing.

Growing domestic capacity and continued investment in education systems may create an attractive and economically viable proposition for some students in East Asia seeking overseas education, it says.

"China presents further challenges through a fast decline in its youthful population. Our analysis of the United Nations Population Division data shows that China's 20-year-old population is expected to decline by 40 percent in the period from 2015 to 2020, compared with the period from 2005 to 2010."

"It's not really a warning," says Janet Ilieva, who wrote the report and is the council's head of economic and qualitative research. "There was a dip in international students last year for the first time in 29 years and the student numbers from India and Pakistan almost halved. The numbers from China continued on their growth trajectory; it was very much business as usual. But all of a sudden their proportion became much higher compared to other countries, significantly higher."

China has a visible presence in major study destinations around the world. In 2013, 274,439 Chinese students enrolled in higher education programs in the United States, 92,248 in Australia and 70,805 in the UK.

"My first impression of England is that it is very clean and idyllic," says Cheng Fanxian, 23, who studies interpreting and translation in the northeast of the country.

"Newcastle University is huge. My teachers are professional. My university and study program meet my expectations, and there are many other Chinese students on my course."

She plans to have a career outside China once she has graduated, she says.

The UK has also left a positive impression on Ni Wei, 27, a teacher who lives in Beijing.

"I chose Sheffield Hallam University because my friend who graduated from there told me it was really awesome. I was thrilled the moment I heard about it.

"The best part of studying overseas was the traveling, while the most difficult part was those endless essays." Reflecting on his decision to return to China, he says: "I came back because I want to be with my family, and since coming back I have been working at an English training institute.

"If I had a chance to do things again, I would not change my mind. Actually, I'd like to recommend my friends to take the chance to stay abroad and enjoy the life there."

Educating foreign students produces a legion of ambassadors ready to extol the virtues of their host country, in addition to generating financial returns to the state, increasing employment, fostering international business partnerships, boosting tourism and providing extra funds for universities.

The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills estimates that the value of the education-related export market - that is, the goods and services bought by foreign fee-paying students in their destination country - may reach about 21.5 billion pounds ($32 billion; 29.6 billion euros) by 2020 and 26.6 billion pounds by 2025. The department estimates that in 2011-12, overseas students paid 10.2 billion pounds ($15.2 billion) in UK tuition fees and living expenses.

It is a picture replicated across other major European study destinations. At the moment France plays host to more than 35,000 Chinese students, and Prime Minister Manuel Valls is keen for that figure to reach 50,000 this year. Campus France, a national agency for promoting higher education, international student services and student mobility, said in a report in November that students from abroad contributed 4.65 billion euros to the economy during their stay in living expenses, university fees, flights on French airlines to and from their home countries and money spent by families and friends during visits. Asian students comprised 19 percent of the 295,084 foreign student population in 2013-14, the report said.

In Germany, by the winter of 2013-14, 30,511 Chinese students were enrolled in its higher education institutions. Chinese students comprised 10.1 percent of the foreign student population, second to Turks, with more than 12,000 undertaking engineering programs. Unlike France and the UK, Germany does not distinguish between fees paid by students from within the EU and those from outside it, and these fees are in the hundreds of euros rather than in the thousands. The financial contribution of foreign students to the German economy is consequently smaller. A study by the German academic exchange service DAAD says that consumer spending by international students was 1.53 billion euros ($1.62 billion) in 2011 and that the spending raised 400 million euros in tax for government budgets.

Chinese students going abroad is hardly new, and there is even a nickname for them when they return -haigui, meaning sea turtle. Millions of Chinese have swapped home for higher education overseas since the country began to open up in 1978, and the numbers have soared over the decades, leading to a small but discernible critical mass with overseas life experience and links to the West.

Meanwhile, domestic universities have been utterly transformed, their populations rocketing. UNESCO says 31,308,378 students were enrolled in tertiary education in China in 2011, compared with 6,365,625 in 1999. Every year the number of students inevitably outstrips the number of places available in the country's 2,400 or so institutions.

An expanding middle class and a freshly minted elite are fueling this seemingly relentless rise in Chinese students seeking international education.

It is worth noting, says Nottingham University Professor Gu Qing, that the number who go abroad for higher education represents a fraction of China's overall university-aged population. Gu, whose area of research is the experience of Chinese students overseas, says: "About 2 percent go overseas. They are not only the educational elite, but the socio-economic elite. Sociologists would argue that this is a phenomenon of inequality as the vast majority of Chinese do not have that experience, and 98 percent will not go overseas."

It is not only Chinese students who are going overseas to get an education; overseas institutions are increasingly migrating to China, whether through a fully operational campus, an agency or an office in a skyscraper.

The annual (and unofficial) Chinese student recruitment campaign began on March 21 as the 20th China International Educational Exhibition Tour was held at the Agricultural Exhibition Center in Beijing. Last year, 473 institutions and education service providers from 29 countries took part in the Beijing leg of the tour. About a quarter of these were from non-English speaking countries. CIEET says 363 were returning exhibitors and that 50,300 people attended the event. About 28,000 visited the Beijing venue in a two-day period. Other cities in this year's CIEET itinerary are Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. The tour ends on March 29.

"I don't think anyone could contemplate what would happen if Chinese student numbers fell," says Ilieva of the UK Higher Education Funding Council. "Most countries would be affected if there were a decline as they are such a significant component of the higher education landscape in international hosting countries. The consequence is beyond money. There would be a financial impact, but the impact may be greater on the viability of courses."

The most sought-after degree in England is a full-time taught master's, she says, with Chinese students represented in almost equal proportion to home students at 25 and 26 percent respectively.

The most popular subjects for Chinese students at this level are business, management and administrative studies, with 14,805 entrants. Chinese students have the highest proportion in mathematical sciences, where they account for 59 percent of an international student cohort of 590. "If there is any decline, these two subject areas will be most affected with regard to numbers and with regard to impact on the discipline," Ilieva says.

What could trigger this decline are state reforms to China's higher education system, which could also hasten a student pivot toward Asia.

On March 11, Times Higher Education published its global university ranking, and five Chinese universities featured in the list of 100 higher education institutions around the world. Peking University and Tsinghua University secured their highest ever positions, at 26 and 32, the report said.

Even though Chinese universities, particularly those at the top, have improved significantly over the past 30 years, there are still many that have a long way to go until they can be truly considered "ranked" institutions in Asia, says Ben Newman, of China Higher Ed, a Beijing analysis, advisory and research firm, on the country's rapidly growing higher education sector.

"There appear to be more constraints in the Chinese education system than in other international systems, but China is still only in the early stages of its reform process. Overall, the more quality-driven the Chinese education system becomes, the more quality international exchanges China can and will conduct, the faster it will grow into a leading education provider both in Asia and across the world."

The focus of China's development strategy is shifting from manufacturing to high-tech development and innovation, and the Chinese government, as well as Chinese society, has high expectations for the higher education industry to produce the matching talent, he says.

"Developing China into a regional educational hub would help China to both produce domestic talent and to attract talent from overseas. Both of these outcomes would assist the country in making a smooth economic transition."

Newman says that as the quality of Chinese tertiary education improves and the number of graduates returning from overseas study increases, postgraduate employment is becoming more competitive and education consumers are becoming more sophisticated.

"As this trend increases, universities in the UK and other major study destinations will need to place increasing emphasis on positive student outcomes and adopt sustainable recruitment practices in order to remain competitive in the China market."

Bu Han contributed to this story.

riazat@chinadaily.com.cn

The 20th China International Educational Exhibition Tour was held at the Agricultural Exhibition Center in Beijing in March. Kuang Linhua / China Daily

Chinese students in oenology visit a wine producer in Bordeaux during their studies in France. Provided to China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 03/27/2015 page1)