Are Chinese students in danger abroad?

(ECNS) -- The safety of Chinese students abroad has become a source of concern in the wake of an attack last month in France's wine-producing region of Bordeaux.

Six Chinese students were attacked by three intoxicated Frenchmen, who shouted racial slurs and threw a bottle at a female student.

Labeled "xenophobic" by French officials, the attack has provoked widespread outrage about the treatment of Chinese students, who have increasingly become targets of serious crimes abroad, according to the Globe, a Beijing-based magazine, in its latest issue.

Similar tragedies have not been limited to France.

On February 17, 2012, a 19-year-old female Chinese student at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom fell victim to an unprovoked attacked by a local youth.

That same month there were 17 robberies in Sheffield, a city in South Yorkshire, UK, where more than one third of the victims were Chinese students, local police have said.

On November 11, 2011, two Chinese students in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, were beaten by a local man. "Violence against Chinese students in that area started as early as 2002," says Qin Junfeng, who works at the Chinese Embassy in Germany.

Wu Yikang, chairman of the Shanghai Institute of European Studies, says that xenophobic feelings led by right-wing groups have been rising across Europe in the past few years, particularly as many countries there are stuck in a long-term recession.

"At a time when social problems, especially unemployment, are heightened - and Chinese people are relatively rich and tend to flaunt their wealth - they can become targets for hooligans," he adds.

European governments tend to cry "xenophobia" to avoid responsibility for these problems, and "their efforts to crack down on such acts are sorely lacking," Wu says.

In addition to criminal violence, Chinese students are also on guard for racism, particularly the more subtle, passive-aggressive kind. In one example, a young Chinese man studying for a master's degree at the University of Hull told reporters that he is excluded socially by his classmates.

Moreover, several Chinese students at the University of Huddersfield have complained that a teacher had given them relatively lower grades, according to the service center for Chinese students in Newcastle.

At first, foreigners anywhere are not treated as individuals, but as representatives of the groups to which they are perceived to belong. On many occasions, for example, Chinese students are stereotyped as being intelligent, very hard-working, and single-minded about their studies.

Stubborn stereotypes have created a barrier for Chinese students within their new foreign communities. Furthermore, the more open dialogue and freedom of expression in these places clash with what the students have learned in China, writes the Globe.

A total of 399,600 Chinese students went abroad for further studies in 2012, a 17.65 percent increase from 2011, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education.