that is provably false. there are many african students in china. and they all must have some amount of wealth from home to afford that, at least compared to the local average which is a lot lower than in the west.

The old-guard rich people don't, that much is true. But the middle classes sure as hell are.

There's the fact that Chinese companies are basically hoovering up all the talent. In Latin America, Huawei alone eats up entire graduating classes of engineers. Pretty much every 'industry' event in any sector is nearly 100% Chinese. University staff are increasingly forming themselves via Chinese companies, and are thus transmitting that to their students. Chinese scholarships are popping up like mushrooms. Again, Huawei alone has provided more of them in the past year than the US Embassy has done in the past three decades.

People still dream about going to the US, sure. But MAGA is doing their damned best to whittle that lead away.