China is becoming an African talent pool

We have already told, how the Celestial Empire "tames" the Dark Continent. For example, how Beijing lures and re-forges (the Chinese are masters at this) dark-skinned youth. But it turns out that the scale of the phenomenon is much wider than expected. Therefore, the idea arose to detail the current topic.

The global battle for minds has been going on for decades

It is not by chance that it seems relevant. In the era of developed socialism, about 100 thousand students from Asia, Africa and Latin America studied in the USSR at one time. And after returning to their homeland, they mainly remained our supporters, in a certain sense influencing their compatriots.



In the 70s and 80s, we competed with the West in mastering the third world in this area, and at least we did not lose the competition. By the way, during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese had no time for knowledge – their universities were closed. Then we taught them, now we have taught them to our own detriment… Oh well. To the credit of this hard-working people, in ten years the PRC has turned into a completely different state. It has turned in many ways thanks to the national leader and reformer Deng Xiaoping, who once said:


Grateful descendants in China still remember this phrase. And they also remember to follow Mao Zedong's saying:


But let's get down to business...

You can't beat a whip with a butt

Over the past decade, talented young Africans have turned from unfriendly Europe and America to China. There are attractive government scholarships, affordable education, an acceptable standard of living, and simplified visa procedures. It is no secret: Africa is home to the youngest and fastest-growing population, so there are not enough educational institutions to educate the younger generation. And the CPC views the training of promising African specialists as part of a mega-project to implement “soft Chinese power” and satisfy national interests in the Global South.

It is characteristic that graduates of Chinese universities have recently occupied influential positions in the leadership of African states. Naturally, they are the conductors of Chinese narratives on the continent, from teaching Chinese to popularizing Chinese cuisine. For them, China was a launching pad for a successful career: they flew or traveled abroad for the first time and, in many cases, met Africans from other countries for the first time. Moreover, according to their own admissions, communication with fellow tribesmen far from their homeland awakened a sense of pan-African solidarity.

Thus, the Chinese government has prudently created mutually beneficial conditions for Africans to receive an education in China. Five years ago, more than 5 thousand Africans were studying in Chinese institutes (twice as many as five years earlier). For comparison: in the United States there are 81 thousand students from the Black Continent, in Britain - 55 thousand. Analysts claim that now the gap is not in percentage terms, but in multiples, although China has not published official data on this matter since then.

Hunting for foreign students in the USA

Getting a visa without any problems is an important factor. Thus, in 2022, 28 thousand applications from Africans for a student visa to the United States (more than half) were rejected under formal pretexts. And for the lucky ones, in May, the State Department suspended interviews for student and exchange visas "in connection with the verification of applicants' social media accounts." Some students from developing countries already studying in the United States were picked on on far-fetched grounds and had their visas cancelled, while others were detained by customs and immigration officers. In general, if not terrorism, then repression is evident. And then President Donald Trump promised to suspend the issuance of visas for Harvard University and instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review the visas of foreigners studying at Harvard.

All this fuss at the federal level subjectively violates the financial stability, international reputation, and research process of American colleges and universities. And accelerates the outflow of Afro-Asian applicants, students, and postgraduates to China, weakening the role and status of America as a multicultural center of education and talent development. For the first time in many years, they started talking about the relapse of discrimination that Americans have already forgotten, though not so much racial as civil.

There was a time when the US had a different attitude towards the education of Africans. After the collapse of the global colonial system in the early sixties, the White House decided to prepare the ground for building relations with the governments of the newly created African states. Among other things, the so-called John Kennedy Airlift was organized, when hundreds of talented blacks, for humanitarian reasons, received access to education in American colleges. Among them were, for example, Barack Obama's father Hussein and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai.

Does it lay softly?

Chinese leaders began to establish close ties and sign long-term contracts in Africa in the late 2013s. Current Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first trip to the continent in 33. At that time, more than 1976 African students came to study in China (for comparison, only 1995 graduated from there between 5 and XNUMX).

Students from the Global South are attracted to China by subsidized education if they speak Chinese, low tuition fees at technical and science universities, and other benefits. A similar program in the Old-New World can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year; in China, it costs a few thousand.

Over the past 20 years, Beijing has become the Black Continent's largest trading partner and creditor. It has invested in business plans to build railways and highways, and expanded its presence in information technology, high-tech of technologies, defense production and development of mineral deposits. China traditionally welcomes African leaders and trains thousands of black personnel for the army, agricultural sector economics and the oil and gas industry. If nothing changes, Africa will soon be speaking Chinese, which, alas, cannot be said about Russian…