Chinese students abroad are more liberal than at home They see faults in China’s system as well as in democracies, surveys show Oct 1st 2026|4 min read America should expect that educating China’s young people will give it “moral, intellectual and commercial influence”, wrote Edmund James, a university president, in 1906. In subsequent years, dozens of China’s brightest went to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on scholarships funded by the American government. Back then, American officials and teachers displayed a confident, missionary liberalism. They thought that educating young Chinese would help mould China in America’s image. But in recent years America has become less welcoming. The number of Chinese enrolled in American universities fell by nearly a third between 2019 and 2025, to 265,000. China, however, is feeling confident. Its leader, Xi Jinping, wants more young Americans to visit and stay for their studies. On September 24th, while at the White House, Mr Xi said he hoped 100,000 young Americans would visit China or study there in the next five years. That is a far cry from the mere 350 American students resident there in 2022, amid the covid-19 pandemic and at a low point in bilateral relations. Mr Xi says that such exchanges could create “a new generation of ambassadors” to sustain the relationship between the two powers. Visiting China “breaks down cognitive barriers”, notes Xinhua, an official news agency. But does experience of a different political environment change people’s thinking? New research by Fan Yingjie of Princeton and co-authors explores whether it does among Chinese in America. The researchers enlisted almost 1,000 Chinese freshmen for their research in 2019. Nearly 400 of them were in America and the rest—a control group—at public universities in China. Over the next four years, Ms Fan and her colleagues regularly put questions to the students to gauge their political leanings, as well as what they thought of China and its government. The work is remarkable because research that involves asking Chinese citizens in China for their views on sensitive political matters has become increasingly rare under Mr Xi’s rule. The ability to compare the answers of such a group with those of Chinese students in America gives the research unusual empirical heft. Mr Xi would surely be disappointed by the results. Ms Fan found that students’ ideological views were remarkably stable throughout their time in America—there was neither a backlash against Western liberalism nor a newfound zeal for it. Yet students (and presumably their families) who decide to study in America in the first place are much more liberal than their homebody peers (see chart 1). They are more likely to support free markets, are less socially conservative and are less nationalistic. One possible reason is that Chinese women** **tend to outnumber men in studying in the West. Fran Martin of the University of Melbourne finds that some young women go overseas because of gender bias in China’s society and job market, and so are less traditional in their outlook. Among Chinese students in America, ideological views did not change much while abroad, says Jennifer Pan of Stanford, a co-author of Ms Fan’s study. But they did update their views of how well the Communist Party is running China. Support for it started lower among those studying in America, and fell sharply during China’s draconian “zero-covid” lockdowns of 2020-22 (see chart 2). Approval for the regime, and general patriotic feeling, fell among undergraduates in China also, but more slowly. Being educated abroad, however, can highlight the West’s shortcomings. Ms Martin’s research shows that as life in China has become technologically advanced, offering many conveniences, some young Chinese studying in the West feel they are living “in a bit of a backwater”. Although most of the cohort followed by Ms. Martin moved back to China after graduation, some have since returned to Australia after experiencing the competitive pressures of China’s work culture and high youth unemployment. In the American study, the share of students planning to move home after graduation dropped from 40% in 2020 to just over 10% by 2023. As for Americans studying in China, vanishingly few stay. Study abroad may not reshape either country’s politics, or even the students themselves, but it does give some Chinese more choices. ■ 民調顯示，他們不僅看到了中國體制的缺點，也看到了民主體制的缺陷。 2026年10月1日 | 閱讀時間約 4 分鐘 美國伊利諾大學校長愛德蒙·詹姆斯（Edmund James）在 1906 年曾寫道，美國應該期待，教育中國的年輕一代將能帶來「道德、知識與商業上的影響力」。在隨後的歲月中，數十位中國最頂尖的優秀人才，憑藉著美國政府資助的獎學金赴麻省理工學院深造。當時，美國的官員與教師展現出一種自信且帶著傳教熱忱的自由主義信念。他們認為，教育中國年輕人將有助於按照美國的形象來塑造中國。然而，近年來美國卻變得不再那麼歡迎他們了。在 2019 年至 2025 年間，入讀美國大學的中國學生人數下降了近三分之一，減少至 26.5 萬人。 相反地，中國現在卻感到信心十足。中國國家領導人習近平希望有更多美國年輕人前來訪問並留學。9 月 24 日，習先生在白宮時表示，他希望在未來五年內能有 10 萬名美國年輕人訪問中國或在當地留學。這與 2022 年新冠疫情期間、以及雙邊關係陷入低谷時僅有 350 名美國留學生常駐中國的情況相比，可謂天壤之別。習先生表示，這樣的交流可以培養出「新一代的大使」，以維護這兩個大國之間的關係。官方媒體新華社也指出，前往中國訪問能夠「打破認知障礙」。但是，體驗不同的政治環境真的會改變人們的思想嗎？ 普林斯頓大學的范英傑（Fan Yingjie，音譯）及其合作著者發表的一項新研究，探討了這種現象是否會發生在赴美留學的中國學生身上。研究人員在 2019 年招募了近 1,000 名中國大一新生進行研究。其中近 400 人在美國，其餘的人——也就是對照組——則在中國的公立大學就讀。在接下來的四年裡，范女士和她的同事們定期向這些學生提問，以評估他們的政治傾向，以及他們對中國及其政府的看法。 這項研究非常難能可貴，因為在習先生的領導下，詢問中國境內中國公民對敏感政治議題看法的研究已經變得越來越罕見。而能夠將這組學生的答案與在美中國留學生的答案進行比較，更賦予了這項研究極高的實證份量。 習先生對研究結果肯定會感到失望。范女士發現，學生們的意識形態觀點在整個赴美留學期間都非常穩定——既沒有出現對西方自由主義的反彈，也沒有對它產生新的狂熱。然而，當初就決定選擇赴美留學的學生（以及他們的家庭），本身就比留在國內的同齡人要自由派得多。他們更有可能支持自由市場、在社會觀念上較不保守，而且國家主義傾向也比較低。 其中一個可能的原因是，在西方留學的中國女性數量往往多於男性。墨爾本大學的法蘭·馬丁（Fran Martin）發現，有些年輕女性選擇出國，是因為中國社會與求職市場中存在著性別偏見，因此她們在觀念上也相對沒那麼傳統。 這項研究的共同作者、史丹佛大學的潘潔（Jennifer Pan）指出，在赴美留學的中國學生當中，他們的意識形態觀點在出國期間並沒有太大的改變。然而，他們對於中國共產黨治理中國成效的看法，確實出現了變化。對該政權的支持度，在選擇赴美留學的人群中原本就比較低，而在 2020 年至 2022 年中國實施嚴厲的「清零」封控政策期間，更是急遽下降)。雖然在中國就讀的大學生對該政權的認同感以及整體愛國情緒也有所下降，但下降的速度相對較為緩慢。 不過，在國外接受教育，同時也會放大西方的缺點。馬丁女士的研究顯示，隨著中國的生活在科技上變得十分先進並提供許多便利，一些在西方留學的中國年輕人反而覺得自己生活在「有點落後的地方」。** ** 雖然馬丁女士所追蹤的這群學生中，大多數人在畢業後都搬回了中國，但在經歷了中國職場文化的激烈競爭壓力與居高不下的青年失業率之後，部分學生後來又回到了澳洲。而在關於美國的那項研究中，計畫在畢業後回國的學生比例，從 2020 年的 40% 大幅降至 2023 年的略高於 10%。至於在中國留學的美國人，留在當地的則是屈指可數。 出國留學或許無法重塑任何一個國家的政治走向，甚至無法改變學生本人，但它確實給了部分中國年輕人更多的選擇。 --Hosting provided by SoundOn