The educational partnership between China and Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (1992-2018)

The article focuses on the development of the educational partnership of the People's Republic of China with the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus in the post-Soviet period. Russia is traditionally regarded as the main heir to the Soviet educational system and engineering school, as the most attractive post-Soviet scientific and educational center for the dynamically developing countries of Asia, which are seeking access to the technological heritage of the Soviet Union. However, Russia is not the only heir to the USSR in the field of education, science and technology. Serious players in this field are Ukraine and Belarus, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union also received a legacy of a strong Russian-language high school and scientific background in such advanced areas as aerospace, shipbuilding, industrial engineering and information technology. The collapse of the USSR and the economic crisis led to a reduction in state financing of the higher education system in the entire post-Soviet space, which forced universities to look for new sources of money, one of which was the attraction of foreign students. The universities of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, which in the second half of the 1990s were not an exception, understood the importance of internationalization of education and began to gradually enter the international educational market. One of the most attractive target audiences for the export of educational services has become the Chinese youth. The main focus of the article is on studying the policies of post-Soviet countries in recruiting Chinese students to study in the universities in these countries. The article analyzes the dynamics of the number of Chinese students, as well as the most popular specialties and areas of training among them. It considers the evolution of the strategy of internationalization of higher education in the People's Republic of China, which over the past 30 years has gone a long way from a strategy of orientation towards obtaining advanced knowledge in foreign universities to a strategy of attracting talents from abroad and turning China into an exporter of educational services. Special attention is paid to analyzing the reasons for the decline in the number of Chinese students in Ukrainian and Belarusian universities since 2010 and the explosive growth of their number in Russian universities in recent years. The article also discusses the impact of the priority project “Development of the export potential of the Russian education system”, the goal of which is to increase the attractiveness and competitiveness of Russian education on the international educational market in order to increase the share of non-primary exports of the Russian Federation on Russian-Chinese educational cooperation. The article provides general conclusions and recommendations for the further development of a full-fledged educational partnership between the countries of the post-Soviet space and China.

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