Why Chinese students are increasingly rare in Taiwan

A dwindling number of Chinese students – known in Chinese as lushing – remain in Taiwan after the Chinese government announced a ban in 2020 on new degree applicants to Taiwanese universities. Three years later, the last cohort of bachelor degree students from China are about to graduate, writes Jordyn Haime for Al Jazeera.

Even as tourism and educational exchange begin to reopen between China and other countries around the world, exchanges with its neighbour roughly 160 km away across the strait are in sharp decline. Many lushing feel like the collateral damage of worsening Beijing-Taipei ties, given the brush-off by politicians on both sides of the strait.

“This new situation is very much like the situation we had during the cold war when there was no people-to-people exchange,” said Tso Chen-dong, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University and a former director of the Kuomintang’s Mainland Affairs Department. In recent years, exchange has become “unidirectional”, Tso said. “We cannot have direct contact with mainland people if they do not come to Taiwan, and it’s very difficult to build friendship without in-person contact.”
Full report on the Al Jazeera site