Educational Migration from Russia to China: Trajectories and Centers of Attraction According to VK Social Network Site Data

A number of educational migrants around the world more than doubled during the last decade and according to the UNESCO, it is going to double one more time by the year 2025. Simultaneously, some Asian and Middle East countries, such as China, that previously were just consumers of foreign educational services, entered the educational market with ambitions to become regional centers. By approximate estimates, the number of Russian students in China has significantly increased, but nevertheless there is no detailed official statistics neither from Russia nor from China. “Digital footprints” from the most popular among Russian-speakers Social Networking Site VK were used to describe an overall pattern of educational migration from Russia to China. Moreover, with the help of conditional inference tree method, the factors influencing the size of migration flows from various Russian cities were analyzed. In addition, analysis includes model describing how the characteristics of the sending and receiving cities are related to the students’ choice of the destination city. Our model showed that the most important factors guiding students’ flows are geographic proximity to China and to the Russian educational centers, as well as an institutional presence of China in the particular city. Moreover, Chinese cities with large number of strong universities are more attractive for Russian international students.