According to MoE’s announcement on 18 March, China's higher education institutions hosted slightly over 377,000 international students in 2014, of whom around 37,000 received scholarships from the Chinese government. Around 164,000 of these were degree-level students. Growth in international students studying in China has slowed noticeably from the 8.6 per cent reported in 2013, but growth in degree-level students is much faster than the overall figure at 11 per cent. Among students coming to China, the top five sending countries were South Korea, the US, Thailand, Russia and Japan. Students from the UK numbered 5,920 making it the 15th largest sending country, the same ranking as in 2013.

The number of Chinese students going abroad to study was 459,800 in 2014, representing growth of 11 per cent over 2013. Around 92 per cent of these were self-funded, while around 5 per cent were government-funded and 3 per cent had their studies paid for by their employers. Meanwhile, the number of returning international students grew by 3 per cent to 364,800.

Analysis by Liu Jing, Assistant Director Education Marketing

The rate of growth in Chinese students heading abroad has bounced back to its 2012 level, after a slowdown in growth in 2013. This has extended China's lead as the top sending country for global student mobility. However, the increase in Chinese students coming to the UK in 2014, as measured by Tier 4 student visa statistics, is much lower than the 11 per cent overall growth in outbound Chinese students. This indicates strong competition from competitor countries, especially the US which launched very favourable visa policies for Chinese students.

Source: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s5987/201503/18...