Overseas Chinese Educational Strategies and Its Policy Implications

Abstract

This paper assesses whether China’s policies for providing educational support to overseas Chinese match the educational needs of current Chinese immigrants around the world. Firstly, the paper presents the different migration backgrounds of four waves of Chinese global migration in contemporary history: labor immigrants to the Global North, international students in the Global North, businessmen in the Global South and the new rich investors in the Global North. Using the concept of intergenerational contract, we found the four waves have distinct parental investment strategies in relation to their migration background, which comes along with their different educational needs. After carefully reviewing China’s policies in overseas education in terms of the assumptions, purpose and background of their implementation, we argue that these policies are outdated and serve the needs of only a limited number of Chinese immigrants due to their ignoring the variety of certain intergenerational contracts. Lastly, some specific suggestions for policy makers are given.

The concept of generational contract: A systematic literature review

“…One of the reasons for making contracts in the first place is that they lead to implementation. Formal generational contracts are implemented via social policies (Letablier, 2018), the welfare state at large (Adams, 1989; Albertini & Kohli, 2013; Daly, 2018; Duben, 2013; Farmer, 2005), or through specific re‐distributional systems such as pensions (Bandyopadhyay & La Pere, 2020; Guigou et al, 2012; Lang, 1990; Sánchez Fuentes et al, 2019), social security programmes (Turner, 1984), social health insurance (Buchner & Wasem, 2006), long‐term care policies (Izuhara, 2002), or policies on education (Zheng et al, 2019).…”

“…There Tremmel (2019, 49) boldly claims that constitution is the most important intergenerational contract in modern societies, as it defines the fundamental principles according to which a state is to be governed. Policy studies suggest that it is possible to ‘read’ the generational contract from the policies that govern, for example, pension or social security (e.g., Göransson, 2013; Izuhara, 2002; Letablier, 2018; Zheng et al, 2019). However, Hamblin (2010, 14) also observes that there is no single intergenerational contract, as there are very different policy packages available to individuals within and between age cohorts.…”

“…This means that state policies change, economic up‐ and downturns affect the possibilities that individuals have in relation to education and employment, and large structural changes such as modernisation, industrialisation and globalisation have created pressures for change in generational contracts. Additionally, the interconnectedness of formal and informal generational contracts comes to the fore as social policies not only steer the use of public resources between generations, but they also create various incentives and shape the norms related to, for example, care for children and older adults (Manor, 2018; Raja, 2009; Waite, 1995), education (Gu, 2022; Yuen, 2007; Zheng et al, 2019), retirement saving and inheritance (Chan et al, 2020; Izuhara, 2002; Kochar, 2014; Manzo et al, 2019), and marriage (Mishra & Kaur, 2021). Consequently, what is seen as a legitimate generational contract now, might not be and probably will not be the same in, for example, 50 years.…”