Research On The Development Of China's Trade In Higher Education Service

Under the background of economic globalization, the global trade of educationservice has seen a rapid development especially in some western developed countrieswhich regard the education industry as an important service industry with greatsupport and have gained substantial economic and social benefits. Recently, withChina's economy stepping into the transitional period, it becomes increasinglyimportant in the following aspects as how to transform the development mode, how torestructure the pattern of production as well as how to find a new economic growthpoint with the cultivation of international talents catering for the requirements of theage. Based on such background, the thesis focuses on the status quo, developingfeatures and existing problems of trade in education services with the intention to finda new way to develop trade services in higher education so as to meet therequirements of China's economic development and serve as important means toimprove China's soft power.According to the classification of General Agreement on Trade in Services, tradein education services can be divided into four categories: cross-border supply,consumption abroad, commercial presence and presence of natural persons, which canbe reflected specifically in higher education in the forms as distance education,education for overseas students, cooperative education, overseas education betweenChina and foreign countries and international flow of teachers and experts. This paperhas firstly analyzed the overall pattern of trade services in higher education worldwidely, observing that the development pattern of China's domestic trade mainly relieson the overseas consumption mode with its export markets focusing on developedcountries such as USA, the United Kingdom and Australia etc, and its import marketsmainly focusing on some emerging economies like China, India and Russia etc. Asthe main source of trade volume are tuition fees, living expenses and expenses ontravelling, the paper draws a conclusion that the United States, Australian, enjoyingtrade surplus while China is now experiencing severe trade deficits. In light of thedominant position of the United States serving as a traditional power country ineducation services, Australia serving as an emerging country and India serving as acountry of the same kind, comparisons in their characteristics and deep reasons oftrade services in higher education have been made to conclude that the United States,Australian, India all possess some similar advantages, such as the great attention of government, the support from policies, the core competitive power of educationproducts and favorable environment.This paper includes four aspects in analyzing the developing process in highereducation trade services: its historic developing process, relevant policies andregulations, the characteristics of the present situation as well as the factors andexisting problems. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, trade inhigher education services has experienced five development stages. All forms of tradeservices advanced by leaps and bounds in China especially after China entered intoWTO, and it reached at the fifth development stage in2001characterizing by thefollowing features:Firstly, due to the limitation of technology and lateness of starting up, the tradeform of cross-border supply in terms of distance education develops slowly and hasn'tformed a large scale at present; secondly, the trade form of consumption abroad interms of education for overseas students shows the tendency of a large increase instudents' immigration and emigration featuring the concentration of both importmarkets and export markets, the imbalance of trade volume, and drainage of talents;thirdly, the rapid appearance of commercial cooperative studying institutions andprograms that are jointly funded by Chinese and foreign organizations, has paved theway for reform of education and teaching on one side, while incurred an imbalancebetween the east and the west part of China with repetitive low efficiencies inproviding education services and some administrative deficiencies on the other side.Fourth, much progress has been made in China in the field of sending college teachersstudying overseas and recruiting more overseas scholars and foreign teachers. Fourth,much progress has been made in China in the field of sending college teachersstudying overseas and recruiting more overseas scholars and foreign teachers.The author make comparisons in trade services between China and othercountries for analyzing factors and problems of China's trade services in highereducation. By conducting a survey through massive questionnaires, lots of data arecollected on economic consumption by foreign students in China, and the conclusionis: the total economic revenue of overseas students studying in China amounted to14.773billion RMB in2011, from which the revenue for tuition fees were3.639billion RMB and living expenses were11.134billion RMB. Based on the Theory ofTrade Multiplier, the total income of overseas students contributed0.06%to theoverall economic growth. Besides, measured by the Okun's Law, the expenses for overseas students' consumption could provide242.4thousand job opportunities inChina. An economy model is built on regression analysis method to measure theconnection on growth of the third industry exerted by foreign students. The finalresults of this model indicate a typical positive correlation between foreign studentsstudying in China and the growth of the third industry.Finally, based on the above analyses, this paper provides some suggestions topromote the development of China's trade in higher education services with regard toideology, government, universities and other related industries. For ideologyconstruction, the country need to ensure proper openness of trade services ineducation and foster a scientific notion of higher education industry; for government,it need to establish the nation's overall strategy, complete policy supporting system,and make full use of the economic leverage; and for related supporting industries:they need to attract more high-level talents to study and work in China under afavorable domestic environment guaranteed by improvement of various industriessuch as the natural environment, food safety and medical assurance.