Dive Brief:

• Chinese college students in China tend to be very patriotic and skeptical of the U.S., according to recent conversations between the students and reporters with WorldPost, an offshoot of the Huffington Post.
• The sampling of opinions from the students, most of whom hadn’t visited the U.S., seemed to reflect stereotypes from movies, TV, third-hand accounts, and their own contact with Americans.
• The conversations also showed that the students were sensitive about negative perceptions of China, which they saw as aggravated by U.S. media.

Dive Insight:

Any insight into the thoughts and beliefs of Chinese college students, no matter how unscientific, could be helpful to U.S. higher education recruiters, especially as the Chinese dominate international student enrollment numbers for American graduate schools. The WorldPost conversations also showed that the students seemed willing to consider viewpoints that didn’t match their initial impressions of the U.S. and the West.