The movements of students across national borders in East Asia have recently been changing drastically. Our image of these movements used to be that East Asian countries only sent their students to advanced countries in North America and Western Europe, not to any of their fellow countries—except for a trickle to Japan—while receiving very few. In short, the movements were one-way out from East Asia. More recently, however, we see two-way flows of students going abroad in many different directions within the region; rapidly increasing numbers of students are going abroad to study at colleges and universities in other East Asian countries, making most countries the recipients as well as the senders of students and producing a very lively student exchange “market” in East Asia.
How do we interpret this phenomenal change? First, the transborder movements of students in East Asia are regarded as a part of a wider migration that has been rapidly increasing in the region. It is likely that the transborder movements of people in general had already started to create a region of mutual transportation, exchanges, and communication in East Asia when Bin Mahatir, then the prime minister of Malaysia, proposed an East Asian Economic Group in 1990–91. People repeatedly flying in passenger airliners over fairly short distances have created a region by proximity. Secondly, as many East Asian countries now have fairly well developed middle-class societies, their higher education is no longer for the elites only. More and more students want to study abroad as an extension of their education in their home countries. Thirdly, many East Asian governments have been trying to draw more foreign students, believing that the number of foreign students the country receives is an index of its international status. Universities have been required by governments to institute various transnational programs to attract more students from overseas, mainly from neighboring countries. It is ironic that international competition among the governments has helped to increase the transnational movements of young people in the region.
Ordinary people moving transnationally are creating a loosely defined East Asian community. Young students who study in another country, communicate with others of the same generation and increasingly share the same culture, giving the community a firmer shape, and it is hoped that the international and transnational education they receive will give this East Asian community its direction.
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