Re Young Students Chase the New Chinese Dream by Studying Overseas

Totally correct!
My school recently had a visit from a Chinese-Canadian lady who was representing McGill university in Canada. Her job was to visit several schools in our province expressing total disdain at the English ability of many Chinese students being sent there.

Any FT who has taught in a Chinese High School will know exactly what she means. The number of Chinese students who are being sent overseas to study when they have extremely limited English language ability is abhorrent.

Many don't go of their own volition, they go because their rich parents want to brag to their friends that their son/daughter is studying at an overseas university. I have several grade 11 students who will go to Canada next summer, yet their English ability is abysmal. I teach grade 4 students who have far better English ability than many of my grade 11's.

The system itself is corrupt. High school principals are being 'paid off' by rich parents to sign-off on their kids' achievements.

The article is nothing short of nonsense.

Re Young Students Chase the New Chinese Dream by Studying Overseas

The article and comments are dull, since they fail to identify the truth behind all the noise.

Editor's Note:
Families of all social classes in China are searching for opportunities to send their high school or college children abroad. This translated article examines the recent surge in study abroad students from China and concludes that China cannot call itself a real global power until students compete for spots in Chinese universities rather than foreign ones.

First of all, "not all social classes" but rich Chinese mostly seek those choices to wash their dirty money. A regular Chen with a monthly salary of 5,000 Yuan can only dream about sending his/her kid to a place where 4 years may cost as much as a million Yuan. The following assessment of "the recent surge in study abroad" and the editor's conclusion are blind since they fail to demonstrate the true reasons why the country cannot be considered for superpower and since students do fight for spots at Chinese universities. Had the editor mentioned corruption and unfair practices in the selection process to the Chinese universities s/he'd have a better case than that; however, s/he'd have to explain the same corruption/unfair practices in western unis too.

From the article:
Studying abroad is an important part of the new Chinese dream.

The dream is to get as much money out of the red nation rather than to prepare local students well in English and other areas prior to departure for the dream schools abroad. Many kids have little idea what they'd like to study abroad and most of them show how privileged they are and how they don't need to learn much. Some kids that'd like to study have got so behind in the area of English that it's virtually impossible to prepare them in such a short time as they want to. So, it may be important to some who have just realized they can't do well in their GaoKao (Chinese college entry test) to their unis.

The push to study abroad has become extreme.

That's for sure for the rich families are realizing their spoiled kids that've learnt little in 9-12 years now ought to learn so much. Kids are attempting to learn 50 new English words per day and memorize large parts of TOEFL, IELTS, ACT, SAT etc. Moreover, they're relying on abroad foundation programs (out of which some are illegal) that they corrupt with all they can.

A title of one part of the article:
American Soft Power

It's business and it's to instill the values necessary.

Concluding sentence from the article:
Only when Chinese students are no longer competing to study abroad can China claim to truly be a powerful country.

The fallacies truly end here in the toothless statement. How unperceptive can we be not to see that the nation is taking advantage of our corrupt system. This is about corrupters corrupting corrupters and both taking advantage of each other. This is how American and China are in the top now. Chinese don't need their resources as they can exploit others to be in the front.

Anyhow, it's needless to reply to the three comments following the article as one seems deleted, one hilarious to say the least and one totally incomplete. So much for "echinacities.com"