Educational migration from Kazakhstan to China: reality and prospects

International student mobility is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in higher education worldwide. The dominant trend of the past few years was the growing flow of students from developing countries to universities in the West, primarily in the United Kingdom and the United States. Currently, China is the third top destination for international students after the above-mentioned countries. Growing outside interest in Chinese education and language is a global trend that confirms the rising political and economic influence of China. Modern China has one of the most extensive higher education systems in the world. As the country’s role increases in world affairs, China promotes its international higher education and targeting the goal to become a leader in the global higher education system. This article analyses the aims and process of the Chinese higher education internationalization and its impact and trends on educational cooperation with Kazakhstan. Therefore, the study reveals outcomes of China’s recent educational policy through the case of Kazakhstan, as a country with a dynamic influence among the other involved states. The authors analysing current prospects in academic

mobility between China and Kazakhstan, evaluate governmental policies of these two counties in educational cooperation.

Education is at the roots of human resources, cultural exchange, talent, innovation, and think tanks. To enhance the potential of many of these, China has several plans. China made major strides in providing universal education, with compulsory primary and secondary education making major progress. Chinese universities demonstrate impressive results in the world university rankings, one of the main criteria of which is high foreign student enrolment. As of 2017, there were 2,914 universities and colleges1 with about 20 million students in Higher Education2. The Chinese government is strongly committed to turning the country into a global leader as the destination for foreign students and pursues the policy of education internationalization [1]. This policy is believed to promote China’s international image, enhance the country’s soft power and facilitate Chinese investment and business activities abroad. By 2020 China plans to take second place in this ranking, with the United States in the first place [2]. As a part of the drive to expand educational opportunities across the world, a number of outreach programs have been launched by China. Institutionally, a long-term plan to “go out” for the period of 2010-2020 was formulated for the education sector. As a part of the 13th Five Year Plan, China’s Ministry of Education had tasked the HEIs to enhance the training of personnel in expanding the educational system, enhance scholarships for foreign students and increase people-to-people contacts to promote international educational facilities.

The goal of this paper is to identify the factors that stimulate the educational migration of the two countries in the field of education and their consequences as China’s soft power enhance and educational migration dynamic growth. Study migration implies training in a higher or secondary vocational institution abroad in order to obtain a specialty, including preparatory language courses for admission to universities. The main objective of this study was to understand the motivations that drive the internationalization of higher education, which guides Kazakhstan students, on the one hand, and the Chinese government, in every way encouraging a surge in students from Kazakhstan to Chinese universities, on the other. The main question, or rather two interrelated research questions, can be formulated in the following form: To what extent and why is China interested in attracting students from Kazakhstan? And to what extent and why is Chinese education attractive for Kazakhstani students? What is the impact of China education as a soft power on Kazakhstani students?

As for Kazakhstani students seeking to get their education at universities in China, the main incentives for them are the pragmatism of choice under conditions of relatively high quality and affordable prices, and sometimes free access to programs, and more important, the possibility of post-graduate employment in framework of the spreading powerful economic system of a country that claims to be a regional, and over time, possibly global leader.