The ministry said there were “hidden risks” involved, and that smearing China in overseas university applications was a national security risk.
China is the world’s largest market for overseas study, and it has become common practice for students to use agents to apply for foreign universities to help them navigate unfamiliar education and admissions systems.
In the WeChat post, the ministry highlighted the case of a high school student it identified as Zhang. It said Zhang had been told by an agent there would be a much higher chance of being accepted at an overseas university if the student’s application letter was “polished”.
The ministry alleged that Zhang’s letter had subsequently, without permission, been “implanted with a large amount of fake content that pandered to anti-China biases, including reactionary, political speech”.
The consultancy involved was investigated by “national security authorities” and penalised in May, the ministry said, without elaborating.
It said it was illegal to fabricate, publish or disseminate information that endangers national security, citing the detailed rules for the implementation of the counter-espionage law that took effect in 2017.
The ministry said “certain countries” were tightening their policies for international students, and that they were also “trying to use studying abroad as bait to lure young students to engage in anti-China activities”.
It said some education agencies “blindly pursue” their financial interests and university acceptance rates, and in doing so they become “accomplices of overseas anti-China forces that induce young students to fabricate false résumés and images”.
The ministry also took aim at agencies it said had failed to adequately supervise staff training and that lacked awareness about national security.
It said there was “loose screening of foreign staff in some agencies” and some had hired “ill-intended foreign staff with unknown backgrounds and unclear qualifications”.
According to the ministry, those staff had “catered to anti-China forces in the name of obtaining advantages for admission” by rewriting student applications for overseas universities.
Western countries are popular destinations for Chinese looking to study abroad, with the UK, US and Australia the top three choices this year, according to a report by Chinese educational service provider New Oriental Education & Technology Group.
Although numbers have fallen since the pandemic, Chinese students still topped the list of international students in many countries last year – from the US and UK to Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, a separate report by Chinese consultancy EIC Education said.
More Chinese students have headed to Asian destinations in recent years, and mainland Chinese have also looked to Hong Kong to study.
