# Chinese being frozen out of Japanese student visa process

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-03-12T16:03:34Z


Chinese being frozen out of student visa process - The Japan Times

A poll by the Japan Times shows that the Japanese Government is making it hard for Chinese to receive student visas. Out of 3,818 Chinese applicants polled, only 27.1% were granted visas, compared to 87.6% of the 2,332 non-Chinese applicants polled. The paper quotes a Tokyo Metropolitan Police official saying, "In particular, heinous crimes committed by Chinese make up 65 percent of the total, showing an exceedingly high percentage compared with other nationals."

This trend of bashing the Chinese for criminals in Japan is a trend lead by Mayor Ishihara of Tokyo. Statistics may "show" this trend, but being unfriendly to the Chinese is not going to increase the quality of Chinese applicants. I think that in an environment where we need to increase communication with our exceedingly powerful neighbor, this policy of calling them criminals and shutting out their students is just plain stupid.





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Japanese Policy