Chinese language learning opportunities abroad and international student mobility to China

The number of overseas students in China has increased substantially over the last two decades, as has the number of Confucius Institutes (CIs) abroad. Using both official and self-compiled data on CIs abroad, and overseas students in China, by country of origin, we investigate empirically whether Chinese language learning opportunities abroad have exerted a positive effect on the number of students who move to China for study. Using panel data for 182 countries over the period 2002 to 2014, we find evidence in fixed-effects regressions for a sizeable positive effect of the number of CIs in a country on the number of overseas students from that country in China. We also find evidence for effect heterogeneity by countries’ geographic distance to China, the linguistic distance from their official language to Chinese, and their income levels.