On the social media platform Xiaohongshu in China, “Mature Age Study Abroad” has become a hot topic with over 56 million views on related tags. Particularly, there are many Chinese women around the age of 30 or older choosing to study abroad, becoming part of the trend known as “Ruin Study” among Chinese people.
“Mature Age Study Abroad” refers to individuals around the age of 30 who have worked for a few years after graduation before pursuing further studies. Most of them already have some work experience, and some may even have families.
According to a report by the South China Morning Post on June 24, in August 2023, a woman named Claudia Ke from Shanghai had been living in the Burgundy wine region in France for five months. Ke, 35, had previously worked for the fashion magazine “Vogue” in Beijing, then at a department store in Shanghai, and later tried to establish her own consulting company.
In 2022, Ke experienced the lockdown in Shanghai, which she described as a living hell. Her community was sealed off for over two months until it was lifted on June 22 of that year.
During that time, Shanghai turned into a ghost town. Food distribution was based on housing units rather than household size, meaning a family of five received the same amount of food as a single person. Many residents had to bulk buy from neighbors on WeChat groups or order food online.
For those less tech-savvy, especially elderly individuals, it was challenging to procure enough food through online means. Trapped residents protested the limited food supply on WeChat groups and social media, while government drones intimidated anyone expressing discontent by flying to their balconies.
Despite living alone, Ke had to carefully calculate and plan how much food she needed to consume each day. She couldn’t help but wonder how elderly people managed to obtain sufficient food using their phones.
This solitary confinement-like lifestyle initially turned her acceptance of the situation into full-blown panic.
On May 1, 2022, she received a call from her mother urging her to leave and pursue a master’s degree in a new country where she could start anew.
Initially, Ke had no interest in leaving China, Shanghai, or her friends. Additionally, for Chinese citizens, the process of immigrating to Western countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia might take a long time and substantial investment.
However, her anxiety due to the lockdown, the sense of isolation, and witnessing authorities in protective gear forcibly entering homes broke her spirit.
By the time Shanghai lifted the lockdown in June, she had convinced herself that she could do better elsewhere and began preparing to depart.
“It took me 10 days to decide whether to leave,” Ke said. “I love Shanghai deeply, but reality hit me. I had to leave.”
A month later, she returned to her hometown of Beijing, reunited with her mother, and started applying to schools across Europe. Eventually, she was accepted by the Burgundy School of Business as an MBA student. Before heading to France in the summer of 2023, she sold her consulting firm.
Ke is one of many Chinese women in their thirties who have decided to study overseas for their postgraduate degrees. The reasons for women in this age group choosing to study abroad vary, including pressure to marry, shattered career aspirations due to the economic downturn post-pandemic, tightening political control by the Chinese Communist Party leading to more freedoms being curtailed, as well as gender and age discrimination in the workplace.
“Older Chinese women are trying to escape from China through higher education abroad, even though they are unsure of what their future holds outside the country,” Ke said, as she provides educational consulting services to women with similar experiences.
Since last May, she has received over 2,000 private messages from women seeking advice on course selection and school applications on social media.
All of this is happening as China faces historically low marriage and birth rates with the population declining for the second consecutive year. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities claim that women should tell good “family stories” and actively cultivate a “new type of marriage and childbearing culture.”
However, women like Ke do not agree with this approach. “Ruin” is also a way for women to deal with the contradictions in Chinese society: women born under the one-child policy are encouraged to have careers and believe in their own importance. Yet currently, the Chinese government expects women to marry and have children after graduating from university. Unmarried women over the age of 27 are stigmatized as “leftover women.”
Earlier on May 23, 2023, HuXiu.com, a mainland Chinese news site, published a story of three women engaging in “Mature Age Study Abroad.” One of them named Rachel, after working in numerous internet giants in China for two years, faced department closures twice and constantly changing roles. However, fast-paced changes did not mean sitting idly by, as overtime and late nights remained the norm. Ultimately, she quit her job at a major tech firm and used the 500,000 RMB (her total savings from work) to study abroad. Her academic journey went from being a second-tier student studying international trade to pursuing a graduate program in quantitative methods and analysis at a university in the United States.
Not only are many Chinese women opting for “Mature Age Study Abroad,” but more Chinese people are choosing to leave the country post-pandemic, with parents sending their children to study abroad. According to data from WeChat, searches related to “emigration” on Chinese websites reached 33 million in 2022, a nearly fivefold increase from 2021. WeChat later censored the search data for that specific term.
After two years of closed borders due to the pandemic, China reopened its borders in 2023, resulting in increased suppressed demand for studying abroad among Chinese families. This was partly due to China’s troubled economy: declining exports, high youth unemployment rates, and a sharp drop in real estate values (leading many households into a cash-flow crisis—up to 70% of Chinese families investing most of their assets in real estate). Chinese students are increasingly willing to study abroad as they see it as a better option than trying to navigate bleak employment prospects in China.
The South China Morning Post previously reported that countries in Europe like Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Ireland are becoming popular destinations for Chinese students studying abroad.
According to a report by the Associated Press, a student from Shanghai currently studying in the UK, Ms. Huang, stated that the Chinese government’s handling of the pandemic has prompted more young people to go abroad. “After three years of strict control during the pandemic, most people have realized that the outside world is different now, and they are more willing to leave,” she said.