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Those disagreements have overshadowed everything. But when President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met last November, they agreed to encourage more student exchanges as a way to stabilize relations. So far, though, the number of Americans choosing to study in China is low. The U.S. government says about 800 American students were in the country this spring. That's up from about 200 during the depths of the pandemic, but it's a fraction of what it was just a few years ago. According to data compiled by the Institute of International Education, there were over 11,000 Americans studying in China in 2019. By comparison, there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the issue when he met students at New York University's campus in Shanghai in April.
John Ruwitch, Why the number of American students choosing to study in China remains low, June 2024. (Emphasis added.)

I'd like to fact-check this. The claim also appears in The Economist (May 2024), China File (March 2024), The News Lens (June 2024), and Christian Science Monitor (April 2024; they instead say 700).

Question: Are there merely 800 American students in China?

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  • I for one am surprised that there are so many. "That's up from about 200 during the depths of the pandemic, but it's a fraction of what it was just a few years ago." sounds about right though. How do you expect this to be cross checked though? Several Western MSM report similar figures because the source is ultimately the US gov't. Do you want official Chinese data? Commented Jun 29, 2024 at 14:34
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    Srsly, unless a student wanted to specifically study Chinese history or language, ... for example, in contrast to mathematics (my field) ... I'd think it'd make little sense for a U.S. student to go there. Tooooo many complications and inconveniences, AND, maybe not state-of-the-art... Commented Jun 29, 2024 at 21:49
  • Weak support the claim: statista.com/statistics/374169/… Commented Jul 1, 2024 at 10:34
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    @paulgarrett I would have imagined that the number of US-citizen students of Chinese history and language (and music, art, etc.) would be large enough that there would be more than 800 of them studying in China at any point. I wonder what proportion of the total 800 represents. Rebecca J. Stones: I would probably ask instead, or also, about the source of the 800 figure. Commented Jul 3, 2024 at 8:32
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    @gottrolledtoomuchthisweek I mean I would ask more specifically about the source. The US government is a huge entity -- which part of it developed these statistics? What was the methodology? How does the US government know of these people in China? Did they get the information from the Chinese government or another source? How do they know that the source (Chinese government or otherwise) is counting all the US citizens studying in China? How is it handling dual citizens, for example? Commented Jul 3, 2024 at 22:16

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Possibly Sourced from Open Doors

All the numbers in the quote seem very similar to the numbers produced by Open Doors, a venture sponsored by the US State Department to collect statistics about US students overseas, and international students in the US.

That's up from about 200 during the depths of the pandemic.

211, according to Open Doors.

[T]here were over 11,000 Americans studying in China in 2019

11,639 according to the same interactive as above.

[T]here are nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the United States

289,526, according to a different page on the same site.

But the one number I couldn't verify on the site was the "800 currently in China" statistic.

The most recent data is from the 2021/2022 school year - so my guess is that the source of the quote is a government official or Open Doors employee with access to data that has not yet been finalized or published. If so, we'll be able to confirm this number in a year or two when the data is put online.

800 Actually Seems Reasonable

The data we do have shows that China has become less attractive in recent years:

While the total number of US students abroad increased from basically none in 2020/2021 to about half of the pre-pandemic total in 2021/2022, the number of US students in China decreased over the same time period, going from 382 to 211.

I would speculate that some combination of strict COVID lockdowns, the post-COVID Chinese economic slowdown, and increasing US / Chinese tensions have made China significantly less attractive to US students, but we'd need some kind of polling to back that up.

Context

China represented about 3% of US overseas students prior to the pandemic - the majority of US students were going to Europe if they were going abroad.

China doesn't have as many high ranking universities as the West - US News and World Report puts 3 of the top 50 global universities in China, compared to 13 in Europe (and 7 between Canada and Australia, where English is an official language).

And 2 of China's 3 high ranking universities are in Hong Kong, which has been in the news for unpleasant reasons in recent years.

Given that, I'm not too surprised that US student's interest in Chinese Universities waned as the Chinese economy cooled, tensions between China and the West rose, and the PRC cracked down on internal dissent; China wasn't a major destination for US students in the first place.

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