The Dalai Lama Receives An Honorary Degree In New York (Photo : Getty Images)
In early 2016, the sentencing of three Chinese students in the US highlighted the problem of sending youth from China to study overseas without adult supervision.
The three are among the 520,000 Chinese youth who left China in 2015 to study overseas, a 14 percent increase from 2014. Their numbers are expected to grow more in the coming years since 30 percent of 458 Chinese millionaires surveyed plan to send their children abroad to attend senior high schools and another 14 percent want their kids to start as early as junior high school, according to the China Citic Bank and Hurun Report, reported China Daily.
Sending Chinese children overseas to study is seen by many parents as the only way for their kids to succeed in life that they would do anything for their sons and daughters to be accepted in top schools abroad, even if their child turns into an exam machine or they hide some ugly truths until the child finished the national college entrance examination.
Family conflicts arising from that situation serve as fodder for "A Love for Separation," a Chinese TV drama about three families who sent their teen kids to study abroad. Aired over douban.com, a cultural website, the show got an average score of 8.2 out of 10 from viewers because many Chinese families identified with the middle-class anxiety on education and the future tackled by the drama.
Based on Lu Yingong’s novel, the drama premiered last week and captured the attention of Chinese viewers even if the show competed with coverage of the Rio 2016 Olympics, reported Wall Street Journal.
Because of the student Diaspora, about 50 percent of more than 60,000 foreign students in US high schools are Chinese. And the bad part is a growing number of them are getting into trouble with the school and the law.
