Rising numbers of Asian and African PhD students choose to study in China

Every weekday, Fatma Satyani, an Indonesian PhD student in China, gets up at 7.30 a.m. to get ready for her day.

She usually eats a youtiao (fried dough stick) or a couple of baozi (steamed buns) with warm soya milk, a traditional Chinese breakfast, before heading out to classes at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in eastern China.

“I love studying here,” says Satyani, who is doing a PhD on big data and business intelligence. “Chinese people are friendly, the food is delicious and getting around Nanjing is very convenient.”

Satyani is one of a fast-growing group of students from low- and middle-income countries — especially nations in Asia and Africa where China has made large investments in development — who are seeking a postgraduate education in the Asian superpower.

The number of international university students in China has climbed steadily since the nation lifted its strict COVID-19 pandemic lockdown rules in late 2022. According to the latest official statistics reported by China Daily, a state-run newspaper, 380,000 international students were studying in the country during the 2024–25 academic year, up by 15% from the previous year. Even so, these students made up less than 1% of the 48.5 million students in China’s higher-education system in the 2024–25 academic year. And the proportion of international students in China represents just a fraction of the share studying in the United States and the United Kingdom (see ‘A small fraction’).

In China, 61% of international students come from Asia, with most of the rest coming from Africa and Europe, at 16% each. About 71,750 of those are in master’s or PhD programmes, according to statistics from the government. Although on the rise, the number of international students is still lower than China’s 2018 pre-pandemic record of nearly 500,000 students, according to QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a UK-based company that analyses global higher-education institutions.

On the move: why PhD students study abroad in 2025

International PhD students based in China say that they were attracted to the programmes by generous scholarships, the opportunity to learn Mandarin and make Chinese connections and China’s rising capabilities in frontier technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data analytics. However, they also face several obstacles. Mandarin is a difficult language to master, and students often have limited options to stay in China after their courses end. Moreover, some countries consider a Chinese degree to be less competitive.

“In the past, we saw that America was the global first in science, technology and education. Looking ahead, I think China will be the global first in those areas, including attracting and training students and researchers from around the world,” Satyani says.

Learn from China

Satyani is in the second year of her PhD programme, having completed a two-year master’s in business management at the same university. She moved to China to study in 2023 because her university in Indonesia, Universal University in Batam, suggested that she do so after completing her bachelor’s degree there.

“I would like to work for Universal University as a professor in the future, so the university assisted me to come to China to study so that I can bring the knowledge I learn in China back to Indonesia and teach the students there,” Satyani says.

After her master’s, Satyani decided to pursue a PhD in China because she had enjoyed her life there and she “wanted to study something that would be useful for the future”. For her, China is a perfect place to learn how companies and governments use big data — large data sets that can be used to assess trends and patterns — and AI tools to improve efficiency. “You’ve got to learn futuristic knowledge in a futuristic country,” Satyani says.

Similarly, meteorology PhD student Aminu Dalhatu Datti was drawn to study at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology because, he says, it is a leading institution for meteorology and its advanced computing systems enable him to use complex models for data analysis. Datti, who is from Nigeria, says that he “had heard a lot of good things about China”, including the fact that it has a fast-growing economy and provides strong support for international students. “So, I wanted to come here and see the country with my own eyes.”

Datti says that he’s been able to attend international meteorology conferences in China and that the knowledge and connections he’s gained from those will be valuable to him when he finishes his PhD and returns to his post at the Nigerian Meteorological Agency in Abuja.

For others, such as Chairina Hanum Siregar, it was lifestyle factors and scholarships that made China attractive. “As a woman, safety is very important, and I really like that the city of Chengdu is safe.” Siregar, who is from Jakarta, is a third-year PhD student in management science and engineering at Sichuan University in Chengdu.

Siregar also applied to universities in the United Kingdom and Australia but did not receive any scholarship offers. She says that she did not apply to universities in the United States at all because of concerns about public safety there.

Building soft power

In 2010, China launched a national campaign called Study in China to attract more global students and to “cultivate a batch of high-quality international students who understand China and are friendly to China”. In 2016, it announced that it would incorporate its international strategy for higher education into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its global infrastructure and development strategy. The initiative has projects in more than 140 partner countries, most of which are low- and middle-income nations. In a statement made at the time, the government described education and trade as the “two wings” that would propel the BRI forward.

All of the students interviewed by Nature’s careers team hold government scholarships. The exact level of sponsorship varies, but for a PhD student, the awards usually include tuition fees and medical insurance, as well as a monthly stipend and free or subsidized housing.

China’s generous scholarships play a key part in attracting international students, says Tu Mengwei, a sociologist at Swansea University, UK. For example, Satyani is a recipient of the Chinese Government Scholarship, which provides her with 3,500 yuan (around US$520) per month and free housing.

China’s effort to make its higher-education system more international has also involved strategies to attract post-PhD researchers from overseas, including people with Chinese ancestry, to work in China. “All of that is a part of a bigger scheme of expanding China’s soft power and global influence,” Tu says.

Changing demographics

“Although the total number of international students in China has bounced back since the pandemic, the demographics have changed dramatically,” says Wen Wen, a higher-education specialist at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In 2018, South Korea was the largest source of international students in China, followed by Thailand, Pakistan, India and the United States, Chinese government figures show. But in 2024, the five nations sending the most students to China were Thailand, Pakistan, Vietnam, Russia and Indonesia, according to QS (see ‘China’s student sources are changing’).

Alice Wei, a consultant at QS, isn’t surprised. China has always been a popular destination for students from Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam because of the close political ties and frequent trade activity between the nations, Wei explains. The rapid economic growth of countries in southeast Asia has also driven a demand for talent, leading young people to seek a high-quality education abroad, she says.

In Tu’s view, the influx of international students from Pakistan and other BRI nations in 2018–23 — when she was doing field work on the experiences of international students in China¹ — was not only driven by China’s targeted policy, but also the applicants’ own plans and desires. For example, as China has strengthened its transport and infrastructure links with Pakistan, students there “gradually discovered that they would have better job opportunities if they learn to speak Mandarin or have connections in China,” Tu notes. “It’s a two-way street.” China has been building the Pakistan Economic Corridor² since 2015, a $62-billion flagship project under the BRI that aims to construct a series of transport and infrastructure facilities linking Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea to western China’s landlocked Xinjiang autonomous region.

By contrast, the number of South Korean and US students in China has dropped. According to data from South Korea’s education ministry, South Korean student numbers plummeted by nearly 80% between 2017 and 2023, and the number of students from the United States in China shrank from around 24,000 in 2017 to just 400 in 2023, according to QS. The large drops are mostly due to China’s strict lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical tension and worsening public sentiment towards China in these nations, researchers say.

Dedicated programmes

International students in China mostly study dedicated, predominantly English-speaking courses set up by universities. Few students live, study or do research alongside their Chinese peers. China has a long tradition of managing international students separately from their Chinese counterparts owing to immigration and public-security rules, Wen says.