Attracting China’s middle class

New environment: China national students having dinner together at a restaurant in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur.

While dwellers from tier one Chinese cities eye Western education, Malaysia can promote its universities to students in other provinces. 

HAVING completed a year in an exchange programme as a Malay language major student at the University of Malaya, Niu Yufei decided to return to Malaysia to pursue her postgraduate education in a private university.

The 23-year-old, who hails from Kunming in Yunnan province, likes Malaysia for the English-speaking environment and the education that is good value for money.

“The teaching methods and ideology are more advanced. There is an emphasis on self-learning to enhance the students’ skills,” the Master of Entrepreneurship student at HELP University said.

In 2014, a total of 459,800 Chinese students went abroad to further their studies, an increase of 11.1%, according to data from the Chinese Education Ministry. While the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan are their preferred destinations, Malaysia has also attracted a share of Chinese students.

The Education Malaysia office in the Chinese capital of Beijing estimated that the number of Chinese students in Malaysia exceeded 10,000 last year, and it plans to do more to capture a larger piece of the pie.

Education Malaysia Beijing director and Malaysian Embassy’s Education Promotion counsellor Dr Mohd Rozi Ismail said their efforts are guided under the tagline of “One Destination, Million Promotions” and the Education Ministry’s official “Soaring Upwards” theme.

They have strategised ways to best court Chinese students with the ongoing activities of participating in expos, paying official visits to the provincial education bureaus and organising seminars.

“Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Mary Yap, who came to Harbin and Beijing recently on an official visit, advised us to emphasise university ranking and highlight the top courses when promoting a university, such as maritime studies at Universiti Malaysia Sabah or engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, so the promotion will be more focused,” Dr Rozi said.

He noted that Chinese parents want only the best education for their only offspring, so they tend to be very choosy and insist on quality education in good universities.

To give them the confidence to send their kids to Malaysia, Education Malaysia Beijing is mulling over the possibilities of collaborating with Tourism Malaysia to organise tours for Chinese parents to visit Malaysia and see for themselves the environment and facilities offered by the institutions.

Affordable education aside, Malaysia holds a special position because of its unique culture, tropical weather, easy access to the beaches and widespread use of Mandarin.

The relatively inexpensive cost of living also makes Malaysia an appealing choice to Chinese parents, who usually set aside a huge budget for their children’s education.

“Many parents have approached us to tell us about the colourful experiences their kids have had in Malaysia,” Dr Rozi said.

“They were enchanted by the local culture through the activities arranged by the universities, such as home stay and scuba diving.”

Education Malaysia Beijing, which oversees mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Russia, Mongolia, Japan, South Korea and Bhutan, promotes both public and private universities and university colleges that are recognised by the Chinese government.

Business studies, engineering, English language, Islamic finance and public administration are the popular courses among the Chinese students.

“When we promote education in China, we emphasise the close ties between Malaysia and China and our hope to further strengthen the relations with education,” Dr Rozi said.

“We also draw attention to the Malaysian Education Blueprint (Higher Education) for 2015-2025, which outlines the initiatives to make Malaysia an international hub of educational excellence while producing quality graduates.”

But promoting Malaysia is no easy task in today’s China, which has seen a rise of affluent urbanites, compared to when China first opened up its doors to send its students overseas in 1978.

“Malaysia was like hot cakes between 1998 and 2004. Back then, Malaysia was considered much more advanced than China and visas to the Britain and US were difficult to obtain,” said Kenneth Quah, the Malaysia and Singapore Department director of the Dongfang International Centre for Educational Exchange.

Dongfang was established by the China Scholarship Council, a non-profit institution affiliated to the Chinese Education Ministry and in charge of fostering educational exchanges.

As the Chinese get richer and have access to more options, Malaysia lost some of its lustre in their eyes. Quah said Malaysia was badly hit when the US eased its student visa policy for the Chinese, and the recent racial spats back home did not help with the situation.

“It has caused a lot of panic among the parents in China. This will actually do more damage than the aviation tragedies,” he said.

Quah said the higher learning institutions have to come together to rebrand and build up the country’s reputation.

In terms of ranking, Malaysian institutions are as good as the key universities in China, Quah said, drawing reference from the QS University Rankings Asia 2015.

In China, there are approximately 3,000 higher learning institutions, and slightly more than 100 of them are key universities under Project 211, he explained.

Seventy-two of these key universities made it to the top 300 list, while Malaysia is represented by 21 public and private universities in the ranking.

For example, China’s Sun Yat-sen University is placed 48th while Universiti Sains Malaysia is ranked 49th, which shows the Chinese our universities are on par with the Chinese institutions, Quah added.

The competitive school fees, made even more affordable by the recent depreciation of the ringgit, is another aspect that Malaysia can use to good advantage on a short-term basis.

“Instead of attending private third tier universities in China, they can attend first tier institutions in Malaysia with lower tuition fees,” Quah said.

“There is still a majority of middle-class Chinese who cannot afford to go to the US or Britain, so we share this kind of information with them and inform them of this option.”

While dwellers in the tier one Chinese cities look up to Western education, Quah said there are other provinces which Malaysia can explore.

Business and teacher training programmes aside, Quah added that Malaysia has the potential to develop as the top choice for hospitality courses, for Malaysia is recognised as an advanced tourism country.

Cen Yuyang from Guangxi Minzu University, who spent 10 months studying Malay in Universiti Malaya in 2014, said he would not hesitate to recommend Malaysia to fellow Chinese students.

“It is a multiracial country where people of various ethnic groups gather,” Cen, who also goes by the name of Umar, said. “With relatively lower fees, we can experience an education that is in no way less than the Western system.”