hankyoreh

an iconic example of China's economic rise.

Lee Seong-hyon, freelance writer based in Beijing

With China’s rise as a world economic force with growing international influence, it has become a popular educational destination for overseas students. According to the latest statistics by the China Scholarship Council, the state organ responsible for recruiting overseas students, the number of foreign students in China in 2005 increased a whopping 25 percent from the year before, reflecting the overall trend of an annual 20-percent jump since 2000. No other country in the world bests these figures.

In 2004, the Chinese government announced that it anticipated as many as 120,000 international students in its country by the time it hosts the 2008 Olympic Games. By 2005 it had already surpassed this figure, with the number at more than 140,000.

With China’s booming economy, the idea that knowing Chinese will be an asset in the job market is thought to drive much of the interest. South Koreans particularly see it that way. Among all overseas students, South Korean students top the list, currently totaling 54,000, or 38 percent of the entire foreign student body in China. The increasingly popular term "Chinese Dream" in Korea echoes the sentiment with which Koreans have looked to the United States to pursue their "American Dream."

The term "Chinese Dream" is perhaps not an exaggeration. All relevant figures show how the two countries are closely connected beyond geographical terms. With their establishing of diplomatic relations as recent as 1992, China has already become South Korea’s top export destination and South Korea is now China’s third largest global trading partner.

Studying the Chinese language in South Korea has become such a hot trend that the competition to get into the Chinese department at the nation’s top school, Seoul National University, outstripped its previously ever-popular English department for the first time. Beijing adeptly responded to this popularity by setting up its first overseas language school, the Confucius Institute, in downtown Seoul last year.

Yet, even though Korean students are becoming a ubiquitous presence on Chinese campuses, hoping to grab the opportunities in China that everyone is talking about these days, dreams are hard to come by. And the pursuit of success in China is no exception.

For example, many Korean companies with branches in China are not yet ready to employ South Koreans who have completed their studies there. Samsung, South Korea’s flagship global brand, has a workforce of approximately 50,000 in China, including in Tianjin and Suzhou. But it predominately employs Chinese nationals because it can pay them lower wages.

In China, the average monthly salary for college graduates in big cities such as Beijing is 2,000 RMB (250 USD), while Korean jobseekers there see a monthly wage of 8,000 RMB as a minimum they can accept.

Understandably, most Korean companies are not ready to pay such an amount, and Korean job seekers are not willing to lower their expectations, which are already much lower than that of their peers in Korea where, they believe, a successful college graduate could earn around 3 million won (3,100 USD) a month.

Additionally, a large number of Korean companies in China view China-educated Korean students as lacking the kind of high skills level they find in those educated in Korea. Although they attend Chinese universities, some schools offer courses specifically tailored to the needs of these foreign students, mainly because of their lack of language proficiency. For example, Korean students majoring in Chinese literature at China’s prestigious Peking University (Beijing University) take classes that are less demanding than their Chinese peers. Not surprisingly, companies carefully look at their school records and often request separate official Chinese language proficiency test results such as the HSK, which is a Chinese counterpart of the English test, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Some Korean managers who participated in hiring new recruits note poor job recruitment examination results and also their poor English skills.

Why do these managers expect English skills in China? Because many overseas Korean companies with an eye on global expansion see English as a prerequisite, even in China. On the other hand, China-educated Korean students’ Chinese proficiency - their selling point - is often viewed with skepticism. Namely, their Chinese is though to be not good enough. It is a relative comparison: in China, there are 2 million Chinese citizens of Korean heritage who speak both Korean and Chinese fluently. These individuals are favored by Korean companies because they are perceived as very efficient in both languages, and also in their handling of local administrative procedures, which are often complex for foreign business establishments to grasp. Another critical factor is that they expect the same low level of salary as other Chinese do, not the higher ones that Korea-born Koreans would request.

China-educated Korean students’ cultural disconnection with their home nation adds another subtle twist to the issue. Spending their formative years in China, these individuals lack the skills to handle interpersonal relationships based on the complicated Korean social order in which age and seniority are big determining factors. Korean students in China are often accused of lacking this cultural respect, expected in Korean culture. Some also point out their being less in tune with current issues in Korea, such as the controversy surrounding the free trade negotiations with the United States. In short, they are not regarded as fully ’bicultural.’

Among all these negative perceptions that highlight the status of Korean students in China, the most damaging and persistent one is the view that these students are not the cream of the crop from the beginning. They are perceived as "escapees" to China, after having failed academically in South Korea.

This greatly hurts these students’ self-esteem and image. The South Korean media’s portrayal of them as "playing hard, studying little" adds insult to their wounds. There are also web sites where the pro and con of the study in China often becomes a fierce and wasteful war of words and even turns into a hate-message board between those who support study in China and those who see it as an alternative destination for "second-class Koreans" who cannot afford to go to America.

Yet the "China rush" by South Koreans is continuing. And the Koreans coming over are getting younger and younger. As early as seven or eight, Korean students are sent over by their parents, who want to cash in on China’s future potential by having their children master the local language and culture. These parents and some private institutions that profit through commissions from sending students to China naturally form an interest group, and react angrily at any criticism that portrays study in China in a less than positive light.

A well known example is the case of Professor Kim June-bong, who has spent more than 10 years in China and teaches at a Chinese University. He has himself sent both of his children to Chinese school. He was recently invited to speak at a Korean town hall meeting in Beijing to share his views on educating children in China. When he raised some concerns about the early education of Korean students in China, his speech was interrupted by an angry parent. Apparently, this parent felt his interest were being undermined by Kim’s words.

After all, it is never an easy decision for a Korean family to uproot its livelihood in Korea and move to China to start from scratch. And Korean families do not want to feel that their decision to come to China was a mistake.

Whether China is an educational opportunity or a wasted effort is often debated by a mix of different voices and interests. Some say that China’s socialist philosophy, which prevails in the Chinese educational system, is backward. On the other hand, there are also some South Korean lawmakers who claim that given China’s future prospects, South Korea needs to have as many as 1 million students in China, slated to become experts on the nation.

But few, if any, Korean scholars who earned doctoral degrees in China have returned to their home nation to find themselves greeted with job offers. Academic credentials earned in China are often looked at in Korea as lacking the kind of scholarly intensity practiced in other developed countries, and Chinese education is also heavily influenced by political ideologies that the Chinese communist government endorses.

The matter is complex. And there comes a third view to the debate. Namely, the idea that ’one should not confuse China’s booming economy with its educational system.’ According to this view, China is for sure a promised land in terms of economy and investment, but its socialist-based education is still backward, filled with ideas that are not compatible with capitalist Western education, on which South Korean education is based.

Whether Korean students in China will achieve their dreams or not is an open question. In the meantime, some people lament that it was not the quality of Chinese education, but rather the poor level of South Korean higher education, that drove these students to leave their home nation in a mass exodus, seeking opportunity elsewhere.

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