Decades of exchange produce finest fruit

Even as countless Chinese study abroad, China plays host to many students from Asian countries. Of the international students in China in 2019, 54.1 percent were from countries participating in the BRI, according to Ministry of Education data published last year.

Yachongtou is among tens of thousands of foreign students in Guangxi, one of the regions in China that hosts the most overseas students from ASEAN countries.

In 2019 international students from these 10 BRI countries studying in Guangxi accounted for 64 percent of all foreign students there. Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam each had more than 1,000 of its nationals pursuing higher education in Guangxi.

In the same year, Guangxi University for Nationalities recruited 1,555 foreign students, more than 93 percent of them from ASEAN countries. Because of COVID-19, the university has fewer foreign students, but 815 from ASEAN countries were admitted last year, accounting for more than 87 percent of its foreign student intake.

"Guangxi has its advantages of location, being close to many ASEAN countries," says Feng Guanghuo, director of the university's Department of International Cooperation and Exchange. "In our university a lot of international students even used to fly back home for the weekend and be back in time for Monday's classes."