OK I’m a local Chinese,I never received education abroad but I happen to have 4 real life friends who did, none of whom went west on their own free will. Two of them didn’t even know they were leaving China 4 years after their parents had made the decision for them. Kids hardly participate in the decision making process, if any, and I am pretty certain that it’s a common thing here.
Therefore my point is, there are a whole lot more Chinese students studying broad than it should be. Most of them are just paying money to stay in U.S. for a few years and then go back to China being a “sea turtle”, which still is considered as an essential component to GOOD academic background. Sure yes you can achieve improvements by forcing said point ABCD, but that won’t make the decisive change that some of us might hope to see. I, for one, think that every high school graduates should be well enough informed to make the decision for themselves. But the truth is, few does.