Student Migration: Evidence from Chinese Students in the US and China

This article is based on the analysis of a pair of cross-national parallel surveys on Chinese students, respectively inside the People's Republic of China and in the US. Specifically, it makes comparisons between two cross-sectional groups: 1) Chinese students in a PRC university who intend to study abroad (with a subset that stated that the United States is their top destination), versus 2) Chinese students already at a US university. Building on a “motility” concept while using an “Intellectual Migration” conceptual framework and chi-square and logistic regression analyses, it demonstrates that Chinese students' possibly returning to the PRC are significantly influenced by their gender, college GPA, family finance, assessment of China's current and future development. The results on outmigration or return migration intentions are presented, and it concludes with some policy implications and future research directions.