You can obtain a green code if you stay in Korea for 30 days or longer before flying to China. This is explicitly stated on the Seoul Embassy website.

These transit bans are enforced by each individual embassy so there is no blanket rule.

At least Thailand works as well in this regard (no 30-day rule there), and I assume many other countries.

The ban is intended to prevent people from flying via Canada, Europe, or Japan/Korea, using simple same/next day connections. These flights are often cheap and should be allowed, assuming China actually wants tourists and students to visit again.

What would possibly make you think China wants tourists and students to visit?

I suppose the hospitality industry doesn't really need foreign visitors in order to thrive, in part due to the fact that Chinese people who would normally go to places like Paris or New York now have to settle with domestic destinations, and have boatloads of coin to spend.

However, the same can't be said about students. Foreign students provide the exact same benefit to Chinese universities as Chinese students do to schools like UCR and Northeastern (cash cows). I also believe foreign students provide intangible value to their Chinese classmates, most of whom want to improve their English and enjoy healthy discourse about world affairs, but I realize Beijing might not be especially swayed by this line of thinking.

Agree with you about the benefit of having international students. And more than agree that this benefit will be sacrificed at the drop of a hat if it conflicts with any other "national interests" goal.

Good to see you back!

The amount of tuition fees China earns from overseas students is vastly dwarfed by the amount of fees Chinese students spend overseas.

Besides they don't even care about the outbound tuition fees, it's just loose change in the grand scheme of things.

I suppose you're right. I know a lot of Chinese universities are able to soak foreign students for 2-3x as much money as locals, but there's no way they could bridge the gap between local tuition and ~$45k (typical US figure) and still attract students.

Are you moved by the diversity argument? IMO, it's one of the main areas in which universities outside of China are way ahead, and I'm pretty sure this is common knowledge within the upper ranks of the Party. How do you think they feel when their own children demand to go to school abroad because they think it is better?

Are you saying you think Xi Jinping is hoping for more foreigners at Chinese universities so that they can mingle and share ideas with the local Chinese students?

I know he's not interested in the mingling part, but I'm sure he would prefer it if the best students stayed in China. For some reason, Japan and Korea don't have this brain drain problem to nearly the same extent, in spite of the fact that their universities are also homogenous.

Chinese universities still can't issue student visas for international students two years later. Medical students who are enrolled at Chinese universities, for example, were kicked out in March 2020 and are still forced to learn online at 2am in their home country.

Those students would definitely go through the PU letter, quarantine rigmarole if they could. But they can't. It's clear that businesspeople are prioritized more highly, and international students are just as useless as tourists.

Absolutely NOT.

The Emperor wants foreigners OUT.

He feels safer that way.

And he wants to minimize friendship and of course relationships with foreigners from here on. Likely medal winners excepted.

(Tutoring for profit is banned. English learning materials are off the shelves. Very soon rarely anybody can pass TOEFL and IE!TS anyway.)

The (primary) stated rationale behind these policies is to reduce the opportunity gap. This sort of makes sense to me; children from poorer families/villages are at a competitive disadvantage as long as wealthy parents are able to devote bottomless resources to their own offspring. I would think test prep is somewhat shielded because there are many good online options, some of which are free or close to free.

However, I have a hard time believing that X and company are truly in favor of isolation. All of those guys have seen past examples, including their own, of this, and it never produces favorable results. I will stop here because I don't want this thread to get moved to the dark side, especially since it's pretty much our only active thread in this subforum.

It's not just a matter of resources, but the competition isn't a good thing for the students. (It isn't here, either.)

I think it's more a matter of physical isolation, not economic isolation.

The only isolation is the banning of foreign nationals entering China. There is very little effort in enforcing a ban on outbound travel by Chinese nationals. Students are still lining up in droves at the Shanghai US Consulate.
Even Taiwan citizens can travel freely in and out of China, of course if they are doing so between China and Taiwan then that means 35 days of quarantine.