In 2023, we said, “Let’s see what happens after COVID.”

By April 2024, we were asking, “Where are you headed?”

Two decades ago, when I began my tenure in Shenzhen education (first at GOS and then CSIE), the flow of young, talented and relatively wealthy Shenzhen students to US schools was gaining momentum. At the time, we had a clear understanding of what we were doing–getting great kids into great schools with an eye to returning to Shenzhen. It’s true. The goal of an overseas education (in England, the United States, Canada, or Australia) was to take Reform and Opening Up and run with it, returning home to make Shenzhen more progressive, more cultured, more wealthy…just MORE because, when riding an economic point break the goal is to hang as long and far as possible. Indeed, many saw Hong Kong universities as a perfect fit for their local aspirations because at a Hong Kong school, students could perfect their English, learn in a progressive environment and remain culturally Chinese, building a regional network to take the Greater Bay Area forward.

Shenzhen students who went abroad during the 90s and 2000s came back to join firms, set up NGOs and explore cultural options. Indeed, even until circa 2017 (when many of Xi’s political reforms took root in Shenzhen), the pattern held for the middle class. The city sent talented, motivated and idealistic youth abroad and talented, motivated, idealistic and well-educated twenty-somethings returned. (Although in retrospect, it seems obvious that the wealthy have been low key leaving ever since Lee Ka-Shing began moving his money out of China circa 2013.)

And then Covid hit.

During those three years of cancelled flights, quarantines and uncertainty, most students didn’t return. It was both too inconvenient (mandatory quarantines) and too expensive. Covid tests, exorbitant flight pricing, and quarantines–travelers paid upfront for all of this. It was easier to stay abroad, graduate and figure out a way to stay until it there was more confidence in returning.

Meanwhile, as China entered its third–and frankly absurd year of lockdowns and testing–there was an exodus of talented professionals and millionaires to Thailand, rural Vietnam and Japan. New Zealand became a target port for those wealthy enough to afford its green card and Australia remained a popular destination. Those who couldn’t get out of the country set up homes far from Beijing and the other big cities. Dali’s tourist industry, for example, slumped during the pandemic years, but its luxury housing markets held steady.

These trends have now fused into what seems another (admittedly convoluted) path out of Shenzhen–immigration via a child who is an overseas student. During the Covid years, those who stayed abroad figured out ways of securing residency and applying for their parents to join them. Now, as the dust settles, there are study abroad agencies that do not simply help students navigate the road to overseas study, but also understand overseas study as part of a path for families to leave the city. In the language of marketing, the core product of this new business model is not simply a better life for a child, but a more stable life for the entire family. Overseas study suddenly appears as part of a tangible product package that ultimately includes immigration.

Shenzhen has the infrastructure in place to get students on this path. The city is home to at least 50 schools that are preparing students to leave the country (see map above). Of these 50 schools, most Chinese schools (public and private) that offer an international program. The point is that once on this path, it is difficult (nearly impossible) for students to return to the gaokao path to university.

And no, none of this is cheap. Tuition at most international schools in the city is about 200,000 yuan ($27,000) per year (and yes it goes up annually). Once its time to apply to go abroad, it can cost over 300,000 yuan (over $40,000 plus additional purchases) to hire an agent to navigate the overseas application process. Immigration facilitation costs even more, without even taking into account what it costs to set up a new life overseas. (And yes, I’m trying to figure out the costs, but unlike tuition and agent fees, immigration costs are harder to track.) I don’t know I’m not sure how many people can actually afford this path (and the path is murky), but in Shenzhen the number of schools that are preparing students to go abroad suggests just how much “overseas study” has come to be a way of managing anxieties about the city’s (and by extension) China’s future.

Today, I’m less interested in the fact that Shenzheners are trying to get out of the country (because over the past few the exodus has been normalized) than I am interested the personal, social and economic consequences of leaving via study abroad. The class of people who can afford this path benefitted from Shenzhen’s boom times and truly love the city. Their children are well educated and talented, most often idealistic. And yet. Anxieties around staying in Shenzhen increasingly structure everyday conversations and expectations of departure are part of every business calculation.

Inquiring minds want to know: where are you headed?