Situation of Chinese Students in Austral, NZ Worrying

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 04, 2003

Situation of Chinese Students in Austral, NZ Worrying

More and more Chinese students have gone to study abroad in recent years. Up till now, there are nearly 500,000 students from China living and studying in over 100 countries and regions in the world, and 70,000-80,000 of them are now in Australia and New Zealand.

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On the wee hours of July 9, when Zhou Qiquan, boss of an old brand-name shop in China Town of Sydney, was ready to shut down and go home, he was forced by three men with swords into a car. The kidnappers asked for AU$ 600,000 as ransom, threatening that they would kill the hostage if no money paid. Mr. He Jiangang, a copartner of Zhou and councilman of Sydney, called the police decisively after the accident. The authorities immediately dispatched 100 policemen over to handle the case. The police succeeded in rescuing the hostage and arrested five suspects two days later. Surprising enough is that the kidnappers were all students from China's mainland, aged from 17 to 22 only. According to the police, they beat brutally the 55-year-old boss.

This case has roused great reaction in Australia. Many people felt worried about the present situation of the Chinese students in Australia and its neighboring country New Zealand.

Students from China unable to make people feel at ease

More and more Chinese students have gone to study abroad in recent years. Up till now, there are nearly 500,000 students from China living and studying in over 100 countries and regions in the world, and 70,000~~80,000 of them are now in Australia and New Zealand. Compared with some traditional popular countries such as the U.S. and U.K., Australia and New Zealand charge less tuition and living expense, which is a vital reason for so many Chinese students to study abroad in these two countries. Another reason is that people usually thought it was stable and safe there, and students' security wouldn't be a problem.

On the Australian side, "education export" has become an important means to increase the fiscal revenue of the government. In view of this policy, the Australian government has kept relaxing the restrictions on foreign students" studying in Australia. Therefore, the Chinese students studying in Australia increased from year to year. Now, there are a total of 40,000 Chinese students in Australia. In 2002, nearly 20,000 Chinese applicants obtained the visa of the Australian government, 50 percent more than that of 2001.

The educational quality in New Zealand is as good as that of Australia. The number of Chinese students has increased since 2000 and has now been close to 30,000. International students have successively brought NZ$ 1.7 billion into this country in the recent two years, 35~40 percent of which are created by the Chinese students.

Quoting the words of the international students, they stay abroad and enjoy "the full personal freedom", benefit from "the easy educational system and foreign language atmosphere which can seldom be obtained in China"; they can fully ��bring themselves to show" there and accumulate "rich knowledge and experience in life".

However, with the soaring number of the Chinese students in these two countries in recent years, especially the increase of younger ones, the unhealthy tendency among groups of international students became more and more outrageous. Many students are lacking ability for self-control and unable to take care of themselves and study alone. Some students are squandering money without restraint, and even blindly pit themselves against one another to show off their richness. Some simply do not study hard and underachieve while some other students study and live among the Chinese can't get accustomed with local culture and environment, and now it is still difficult for them to follow the lessons in classrooms.

What is more troublesome is that these quick-tempered young ones are still in their "reckless period", whose characters are in the shaping. They will easily get hotheaded and be led astray because of the unhealthy influences.

In the recent two years, there is an upward tendency in the immoral behaviors and the vicious cases incurred by international students in Australia and New Zealand. In the past, traffic peccancy was common, often entailing serious accidents; now, their illegal behaviors have changed to kidnapping, blackmailing, robbing and even trafficking in drugs and killing. So, some persons are reduced to criminals while others their victims.

Although officials of the two countries express that it is relatively safe there, the behaviors and living conditions of the Chinese students have already roused the concerns of more and more people here.

A"Kidnapping Season for Chinese"

According to the report, the kidnapping case mentioned above is the 24th one of its kind involved with people from Asia which was cracked down by the police of New South Wales, Australia.

According to Inkster, head of "Robbery & Serious Cases Group" under the police bureau of New South Wales, the actual kidnapping cases are much more than that as published by the media, and some cases became known by the police only after the hostages' families paid off the ransom money. The victims usually are the international students from Chinese mainland of a wealthier family background. However, among those accused suspects of kidnappers, though students from Asia took up quite high a ratio, most of them haven��t been found guilty before. So they just took advantage of other Asian students as their prey.

In New Zealand, the kidnapping cases involved international students occur sometimes. In April this year, a boy of 19 years old from Asia was kidnapped and beaten in Auckland, the largest city of the country. The 15 suspects in this crime were his classmates who forced him to draw from the bank NZ$ 63,000 and give them as ransom. When detecting the case, the Auckland police revealed to the media that most of the criminal cases are the Asians blackmailing the Asians in which you would find some of them were Chinese. After a successive trial of two kidnapping cases with the involvement of Chinese, an Auckland judge couldn't help asking, "is this a kidnapping season for Chinese?"

By PD Online Staff Liu Wei

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