Foreign degrees lose edge in competitive Chinese job market

BEIJING - Nearly 70% of Chinese students who returned after studying abroad said they were "unsatisfied" with job opportunities at home because an overseas degree no longer guarantees them better pay than those who studied in China, a survey has found. Over two-thirds of those surveyed by the Center for China & Globalisation, an independent think tank, said their annual salaries were comparable to their peers in similar positions who studied at home.

Caixin reports that an increase in the number of returnees also means that foreign graduates are no longer a rare commodity in the intensely-competitive Chinese job market. More than half a million Chinese students headed overseas for an education in 2015, and another 400,000 returned home, according to the Ministry of Education.

Even though China is still the biggest source of foreign students in countries like the U.S., U.K., Japan and South Korea, the increase in Chinese people leaving for study abroad has slowed in recent years, while the number of graduates returning has increased.

In 2001, the flow of students out of China more than doubled compared to the previous year, while the number returning grew by just one-third — a difference of 81 percentage points. Last year, the gap had narrowed to only 2 percentage points, researchers said. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).