African Students, Encountering Racism at Top-tier Chinese University, Raise Questions for China’s Expanding Education Initiatives

Zhejiang Normal University is one of the most popular Universities for African students abroad in China. But reports from those students raise questions about race and campus culture, pointing to larger concerns that systematic institutional racism has complicated China’s rise in international higher education.

On a fall afternoon in 2017, Geoffrey, a Malawi national in his first year of a master’s program at Zhejiang Normal University, walked into the student affairs office with a simple request: he wanted to change dorm rooms. It was only the first week of classes, and he had gathered all the signatures required by school policy for a room change.

Thirty minutes later, a routine college process had moved nowhere. When Geoffrey asked why he was not being helped, the choral reply from the administrators was, “We’re all busy.”

Meanwhile, as he waited, white students from Europe streamed into the office with similar administrative requests. They were helped as soon as they arrived, their tasks fastidiously sorted.

“When you are an African in China, it’s hard to get attention. It’s as if you are invisible,” Geoffrey explained, testifying to a situation that he said was all too common at Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU).

Geoffrey started at the University in 2017 after receiving a scholarship to the internationally recognized Institute of International and Comparative Education. Along with Nanjing and Beijing Universities, ZJNU is one the most popular Universities for international students, and hundreds of African students now study there. To…