Getting students back cannot be rushed: China Daily editorial

As the novel coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, the plight of Chinese students studying overseas has drawn increasing concern at home. It is therefore heartening to see the country is stepping up efforts to help students seeking to return home.

The latest response from various government agencies, including the Foreign Ministry and the Civil Aviation Administration, shows the country is making continuous efforts to help and assist overseas students. It is activating major air transportation guarantee mechanisms to arrange extra flights and organizing charter flights to get students back to China.

The global spread of the pandemic has not only put the health of overseas Chinese students at risk but also affected their life and study, especially those in hard-hit countries. There have been multiple cases indicating that they have also become the target of social discrimination and xenophobia in some Western societies. Hence, the government's plan to bring back overseas students demonstrates the motherland's care and love for these students at this difficult time.

On Monday, about 200 overseas Chinese students boarded a designated flight to China facilitated by the Chinese embassy after being stuck at a transfer point in Ethiopia for two nights. The Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom is helping arrange the first charter flight to assist around 200 Chinese students return home too.

But overseas students and their parents need to be rational and sober-minded when making the decision to stay or return home. If conditions permit, it might be safer for some students to stay where they are. And the long distance flight and confined space in an aircraft may increase the risk of transmission.

If they do desire to come home, they need to comply with domestic epidemic control measures, including testing and quarantine after entry. Prevention of imported cases is a priority for domestic efforts to keep the coronavirus at bay, as the country has experienced a hike in imported cases among returning Chinese in March, of which overseas students account for 40 percent.

It should be understandable therefore that the work to bring overseas students back needs to be done in a careful and cautious manner in line with the country's epidemic control requirements.

Statistics show that in 2018 about 1.53 million Chinese students were studying overseas, most of them in Europe and the United States, which have become the new epicenters of the pandemic.

Given the huge number of students and complicated epidemic control realities, it is unrealistic to expect the work can be done within a short period of time, even though the country has the experience of evacuating Chinese stranded overseas before.