More Chinese overseas students returning home

More young Chinese studying abroad are opting to return home, many of them citing better job prospects in China, the South China Morning Post reports.  The government said this month that 82.23% of students who studied abroad returned to China last year, up from 72.38% in 2012. Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said foreign countries’ job markets could not accommodate the surge in Chinese students. He added that unlike in the old days, when scholarships were virtually the only way to study overseas, wealthy Chinese parents could now send their children abroad. “In recent years, more mediocre students went overseas and many of them came back, driving the overall number up, obviously,” he said. National Institute of Education Sciences researcher Chu Chaohui said returning students had more resources and better networks in China to look for a job.