The number of Chinese students studying in the United States has been declining in recent years. In the 2023/2024 academic year, there were 277,398 Chinese students in the U.S., marking a 4% decrease from the previous year. This follows a downward trend from the peak of 372,532 Chinese students in the 2019–2020 academic year. Although Chinese students remained the largest group of international students for over a decade, India surpassed China as the top source of international students in 2023/2024, with 331,602 Indian students enrolled.
So it seems to be 'total Chinese students allowed to be present'. That would indeed mean that it is being doubled. And universities love it because they make a lot of money from it, but in Europe this has been an unmitigated disaster - at least for the population, though the rulers don't care about the population.
that is a reduction from current policy though.
It’s double the 2022 and 2023 numbers, there was ~300k a year before
If those 2022 and 2023 figures are yearly numbers, is this a yearly number as well or one spread out over 5 or 10 years? Seems rather high to me.
It’s much, much worse than you assumed
So it seems to be 'total Chinese students allowed to be present'. That would indeed mean that it is being doubled. And universities love it because they make a lot of money from it, but in Europe this has been an unmitigated disaster - at least for the population, though the rulers don't care about the population.
Like inflation, it never goes down, but merely decelerates.