(LI SHIGONG)

China now leads the world in sending students to the United States for education. Recent reporting on the experiences of those young men and women should cause us to question the value this has for the Chinese nation. Foreign study often conjures up ideas of acquiring new skills and opening one's eyes. Not only may those notions be overblown, there are also significant downsides that we rarely hear about. Foreign study might be a bad bet for China, all things considered. Earlier this year Business Week reported on bait-and-switch tactics used by American and Chinese student recruiters. Those agencies profited by taking hefty fees, in some cases, collecting fees on scholarships won by students. China Daily told of Chinese families moving to the United States under the EB-5 visa program for wealthy investors, not always sensitive to the adjustment difficulties of their children. Neglected by wealthy Chinese parents, the teenagers benefited neither academically nor culturally from immersion in a foreign environment. One boy notably isolated himself "in a Chinese world" of entertainment and media, all within his bedroom.

It's no surprise that money—a necessity for gaining access to the United States and its universities—is also a corrupting influence. Universities in the United States need cash. Whereas tuition for American students is sometimes capped, foreign tuition is not, and Chinese students make a tempting source of funds for building libraries and laboratories that power the world's finest educational institutions. As universities' needs rise, admissions standards fall. The ability to pay becomes a larger factor in Chinese enrollment, not grades, intelligence, or other measures of merit. Chinese students who enroll are thus more likely to be China's new spoiled youth. One report in a U.S. student newspaper said one large group of students recruited from China cut classes en masse, preferring the comfort of cigarettes, computer games, and air-conditioned dorms. No surprise, they seldom interacted with students from other countries or cultures. Some were even uninterested in friendships with fellow Chinese.

I have so far spoken of the dangers of fraud, low standards, and over-privileged children. I'd now like to ponder some deeper economic reasons against foreign study. Foreign study is a kind of capital outflow, both financial and human capital. When a Chinese student graduates and settles abroad permanently, they don't bring skills back to China, providing little benefit for the country that fed and educated him or her from a young age. China's universities, in turn, lose prime talent that could be used to train the next generation of thinkers, scientists and artists. This is an economic problem, but also one of civic duty. When did salary become accepted as the sole driver of one's choices?

Of course, Chinese have a long history of leaving their homeland for a better life. But those migrations were in times of penury completely unlike today's booming China. In times of abundance like these, one's sense of nationality or lack thereof can manifest itself in a decision over moving thousands of kilometers in search of the almighty dollar. Also, another phenomenon cannot be omitted: Chinese parents encouraging their children to study abroad and obtain foreign citizenship, thus allowing the parents to later move there. This too is part of a regrettable trend, a larger trend of subordinating national interests far, far below one's personal fortune and flowering. Is there not something disturbing about young or rich Chinese trading all they have—all of it—for a house and car in Vancouver?

I do not wish to sound alarmist. U.S. universities are trying their best to provide services paying customers seek. As for China, its economy is growing and will continue to grow. Skilled professionals are not in short supply, in part because of labor inflows of non-Chinese who settle happily in China.

My overarching concern is not one of money but of virtue. Chinese society may be failing to endow its youth with a sense of citizenship embodied in honoring and supporting the country of one's birth and socialization. After all, the future development of Chinese society is less likely to depend upon coerced behavior, and more likely to turn upon acceptance of complex, mutual obligations among citizens.

The author is an American teaching in Western philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing