Outbound China market “seems confident”, say stakeholders

The international education market in China seems to overall “be quite confident right now”, and the situation seems “only be getting better”, stakeholders said upon the release of a new report.

According to BONARD’s research into 2022 China market trends, most agencies in the sector are “positive about future outlook”, and that sending numbers have returned back to the “usual”.

“The situation is still not ideal, especially in terms of our Chinese market, but what most agencies shared with us was that they didn’t really release at the same speed as other markets,” said Grace Zhu, China’s branch manager for BONARD.

“Overall, we do believe for this year that the situation will only get better and the market seems to be quite confident right now,” she continued.

While things seem to be looking up, panelists at a webinar explaining the data agreed that some restrictions were still causing some issues.

“You’re seeing apprehension is still there from Chinese students,” said Lee Henshaw, head of northeast Asia investments at Scape.

“It’s an obvious factor impacting mobility, and I think we all would have seen more Chinese students if there wasn’t that sense of apprehension and if there wasn’t that restriction on flights, capacity and availability,” he continued.

In the data offered by BONARD’s research, the areas that seem to have suffered the most are that of K-12 and short-term programs – 95% of agencies are promoting higher education programs, but only 37% and 32% of agencies are currently promoting K-12 and short-term programs, respectively.

The other casualty in the trends in China is the US’s performance – interest in the country has dropped from 93% to 63%, while destinations like Japan, Singapore and New Zealand have all gained over 10% in popularity in 2021, compared to 2019.

Despite this drop in interest, Study Wisconsin head Jennifer Phillips said that the US will take some time to rebalance.

“I think we all would have seen more Chinese students if there wasn’t that sense of apprehension”