For Chinese students, a degree from a US university was once considered a “golden ticket” to coveted jobs back home. But many are now finding that geopolitics is blunting their ambitions.

The Trump administration’s threat of visa cancellations – later shelved after a trade-truce phone call between the US president and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in early June – has compounded already swirling uncertainty for Chinese students in the US.

And at home, some graduates are finding their experience abroad is raising red flags with employers, who are increasingly casting a suspicious eye over graduates trained at foreign universities worldwide.

With their parents footing the hefty bill, some Chinese students are asking if studying abroad is now worth it, especially when the domestic jobs market seems to be favoring homegrown talent.

Barry Lian, a 24-year-old master’s degree graduate from southeastern China who spent three years studying in the US, had dreams of working on Wall Street – until his student visa was abruptly revoked last July.

Lian, who studied Economic Statistics at a Chinese university, lost his visa under a legacy ban from President Donald Trump’s first term, which effectively denies US visas for Chinese students and researchers from universities believed to be linked to the Chinese military.

The move stranded Lian in China during his summer internship, forcing him to dive into the “rat race” of the domestic jobs market.

None of his 70-something applications to state-backed banks and financial firms landed him a role, with most not even passing the initial CV screenings, Lian noted.

“There are likely political sensitivities at play,” he said, asking CNN not to disclose which Chinese university he studied at because of the sensitivities of the subject.

Lian thinks his experience in the US hindered his entry into the public sector – and made applying for a role in a private company unexpectedly challenging.

“Being caught up in the dispute between the two countries just left you helpless,” said Lian, whose job-hunting finally paid off in March with an offer from a private investment firm in Shanghai.

Spy concerns as a ‘social norm’

China’s job market – in both the private and public sectors – isn’t specifically shunning graduates from the US only, but a broader group of foreign degree holders, even though they are increasingly choosing to come back .

Since Xi took office in 2013, the annual number of overseas returnees has steadily increased from about 350,000 to 580,000 in 2019, before surpassing 1 million in 2021, according to data from the Ministry of Education and the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank.

But not all Chinese companies gave them a rousing reception at a time of intense nationalism and national security suspicions under Xi.

In late April, Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China’s home appliances giant Gree Electric told a shareholder meeting that the company “will never use any returnees because there could be spies among them” – a comment criticized on social media and state media for “stigmatizing” and “stereotyping” the returning cohort.

The “spy suspicion” – a paranoia usually found in state-backed firms – is especially jarring coming from a prominent private business leader. And it adds insult to injury for Chinese overseas graduates like Lian, who say they already feel unwelcome in China’s public sector.

Since 2023, multiple provinces, including arguably the most liberal-minded Guangdong in southeastern China and major cities like Beijing, have barred foreign degree holders from signing up to the “Xuandiaosheng” program, a government recruitment initiative that selects elite graduates to groom as future senior cadres for the government and the ruling Communist Party.

In the same year, nearly half of all Chinese overseas students sought to enter state-backed firms or government organs – places offering “iron rice bowl” jobs, coveted for their perceived security in a sputtering economy – according to a yearly report co-released by Chinese Global Youth Summit and Liepin, a major online recruitment platform in China.

“The public sector is becoming less welcoming to overseas graduates,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He pointed to widespread national security concerns as a key driver.

Wu explained that a climate of paranoia surrounding espionage has become a “social norm” in China, largely thanks to a social media campaign by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s powerful civilian spy agency, which regularly tells citizens that foreign spies are everywhere.

Overseas graduates, in particular, have long been seen by the MSS as “easy targets” to be recruited by foreign spy agencies, state media said.

A recent series of propaganda videos published by the authority’s social media account includes one that details how a Chinese man was lured by a foreign spy during his doctoral study abroad and ended up helping them gather classified national secrets.

An ‘inward-looking’ China

For some Chinese employers, hiring domestic graduates not only means fewer security worries – they’re also cheaper and a better fit for the local culture and market.

Yuan Xin, a career development consultant in Shanghai, said some Chinese companies prefer more “cost-effective” domestic students perceived to have a stronger work ethic and a better grasp of the local market.

“From what we’ve seen, most students who return after a one-year master’s program indeed don’t have strong study skills and their work skills are just like that,” said Yuan, arguing the “screening mechanism” for domestic postgraduate programs is more rigorous than those used abroad.

In China, students must pass a highly competitive national postgraduate entrance exam and then study for at least two years before landing a master’s degree.

Master’s degree holders have long dominated the returnee landscape, accounting for nearly 80% of all returnees last year, according to an annual survey by Zhilian Zhaopin, a leading recruitment platform in China.

Yuan said graduates from Western countries, where work-life balance is highly valued, “may not quite fit” the domestic workplace culture, where “996” schedules – from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week – are common.

The widespread belief that overseas graduates aren’t as committed or capable as local ones strikes Ezio Duan as a “stereotype,” which he said had a “real impact” on his job search last October.

Duan studied communication in the US for both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and said he only landed three offers from around 400 formal job applications. Similar complaints about the overgeneralization are widely shared by other returned postgrads online.

Duan, who studied in the US for five years and is focused on private firms in China, views the “widespread pressure of long working hours” at home as “a real problem.” However, Lian, who was open to working in state-backed corporations after a three-year stint in the US, said he “won’t be very resistant” to workplace culture back home.

But even the hardest-working Chinese overseas graduates may find it difficult to overcome the shift in attitudes among domestic employers.

Wu, a scholar of Chinese public policy, says employers have become more reluctant to hire overseas graduates like Duan and Lian under Xi’s “inward-looking” policies.

“(Xi) aims to build a relatively closed system as there’s a major narrative that he sees as a harsh reality – China-US rivalry,” Wu said.

Wu said the “inward-looking” tendency has become clearer to the public since 2018, when Xi scrapped presidential term caps, and since he has beefed up domestic “self-reliance and security” amid a China-US trade war.

“The emphasis on internal stability and control has, in many ways, taken precedence over previous commitments to reform and openness,” said Wu, noting that overseas students are a key embodiment of China’s “opening door” policy.

“Those advantages we thought we had six years ago have completely eroded over the past few years,” said communications graduate Duan.

“That’s something I really didn’t expect.”(CNN)

Update news