There has been a long history of Chinese students going to the United States for higher education, dating back to the mid-19th century when Yung Wing attended Yale University. After 1949 and the Communist takeover of China though, the US (and the entire West) was mostly closed to mainland Chinese students for 30 years. It would not be until after the Cultural Revolution and at the dawn of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening that Chinese students again began to venture to US campuses. Due to the setbacks and consequences of isolation, these students wielded great windfalls from their foreign education upon returning to China, as they were guaranteed prestigious positions in the rapidly developing and opening society. In contrast, the recent and current cohorts associated with the massive boom in Chinese filling American classrooms, dramatically rising in the early 2000s, have not seen the same returns. Upon returning to China fresh with foreign degrees, these students have actually found it difficult to find careers and have had issues of integration back into Chinese society, especially compared to the prior cohort.
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