Downhearted, Stranded Moroccan Students Wish to Return to China

xizhimen · Jun 25, 2021

Downhearted, Stranded Moroccan Students Wish to Return to China

Aborted internships, tedious online classes, shortened or simply canceled exchanges, job losses … Hundreds of Moroccans are losing hope, asking to be allowed to resume their educational and professional pursuits in China.

Sanae Ziadi
June 25, 2021 2:43 p.m.

Rabat - As China prepares to welcome athletes for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the country's borders remain closed to foreign students.

Since the closing of the borders and the arrival of COVID-19, thousands of students have had to say goodbye to their on-campus experience and have been stranded in their homelands ever since.
Moroccan students, among many other overseas learners, are awaiting approval to return to China, unable to travel to their country of study to resume face-to-face classes as student visas are not being issued at the moment. The situation has become unbearable for those who have to spend their nights in front of their computer screen in order to attend their courses remotely.

International students are speaking out against strict entry policies for foreigners imposed by China to control COVID-19 transmission and have started an online campaign to voice their frustration and to be allowed to return to China. #takeusbacktochina

Many of them are tweeting using the trending hashtag #takeusbacktochina and have joined forces by forming the China International Student Union (CISU). They have come together issuing a petition that has so far attracted more than 13,000 signatures requesting officials to take the necessary steps to allow them to return to their country of study.

The in-person lectures and face-to-face interactions with peers and professors are becoming merely distant memories for numerous students of Moroccan citizenship.

Students worry they will miss out on certain practical and problem-solving skills as Wissal Mahfoudi, a student at Hangzhou Dianzi University, says her biomedical engineering major “is dependent on practice and the quality of online studies is so bad.”

“We ask the concerned authorities to take our situation into consideration because we are suffering in silence,” said Chaimae Ben-Gady, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student at Chang'an University class of 2021.
Ben-Gady, like the rest of her peers, is complaining of “mental anguish” and “depression.” She told Morocco World News that she has taken the decision to suspend her studies for a year.

The ordeal started when China closed its borders to all foreign citizens on March 28 last year. Universities, among many other institutions, shut their doors to counter the surge of the virus.
Many more Moroccan students thereafter returned to their home country as flights were progressively resuming and had no choice but to settle for online classes. But as this learning format is becoming ever more taxing, the same students are pleading for help to be allowed back to China.

“We usually take our classes at night or early in the morning due to the 7 hour time difference between Morocco and China,'' Chaimae Soulmi, 19 years old, studying Chinese linguistics at Chang'an University told Morocco World News.
“We’ve been stuck here for 18 months without any answers, we want a clear date for our return to our universities in China” added Soulmi, expressing her dismay.
Shortcomings of remote learning are not to be taken lightly, as it affects one’s academic performance.

Chaima El Rharnouk, a pharmaceutical student in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, pointed out that one of the main shortcomings of the online course delivery is the lack of communication with her peers and professors, as their only communication medium is chat applications.

“Our questions and problems are seldom answered, because the only way we can contact our professors is through WeChat messages, and our questions cannot be answered through simple messages,” El Rharnouk said.
The Chinese embassy in Rabat has remained silent on the incessant claims and has declined to answer Morocco World News’ questions. The Moroccan embassy to the Republic of China is incommunicado as well.
In the absence of clear communication from authorities, collective confusion is mounting, assumptions and speculations are arising.

By largely restricting visa issuances and imposing a hotel quarantine policy, China is hedging its bets by avoiding any potential imported COVID-19 cases.

According to Simohamed Berraz, founder of a study-abroad agency in collaboration with 500 universities, “China is fretting over another potential nation-wide health crisis as the number of international students is non-negligible."
Accommodating them in student housing would require a lengthy risky operation,” Berraz added.

In recent decades, China has become a top study destination in the making, becoming a hub for international students.

Chinese universities are reshaping global higher education as they are surging on world university rankings. In fact, six Chinese reputable universities figure in the top 100 of both Shanghai’s and Time’s Higher Education rankings, taking the lead ahead of Japan in the region.

As a result, China attracts today around half a million international students including a sizable demand from Moroccan students seeking education in Chinese institutions due to their affordability and quality education.
However, the collective frustration has resulted in negative public opinion harming the reputation of the Asian country as a viable destination of higher education.

Students are not the only ones who have had enough of the long wait. Approximately 200 Moroccans expatriates have also called out several officials to return to China.

Although China is coming back to life, the country introduced strict measures for incoming passengers. An overwhelming majority of the stranded expats, lacking proof of vaccination, do not meet the criterion.
Anas Azeroual, a 24-year-old English teacher in China, told Morocco World News that he lost his job there. "I've been contacting some people and they’re waiting for me to get vaccinated to get back,” he said.
Caught off-guard by border closures, he “left everything back there, the plan was just to stay here [in Morocco] for a couple of weeks.”

In a collective formal letter addressed to both the Moroccan Minister of Health and Minister of the Interior, he wrote “We are addressing Your Honor to support our request in order to obtain the Chinese vaccine for the purpose of going back to China to resume our business as normal there.”

Their call has been left unanswered.
Moroccan students and workers alike are trying to reach out to the authorities to no avail. Their predicament is the same: physically distanced from China with no clear date of return.
To top it all off, many direct flights linking Casablanca to Beijing have been canceled leading to overpriced tickets including several layovers.