Repatriation of over 1.4 million Chinese students stranded abroad by Covid-19 creates dilemma

China announced on April 8, 2020, that it will arrange chartered flights to bring back Chinese students stranded overseas by the coronavirus pandemic. But Beijing is also weighing concerns about their return worsening the outbreak in China, where the number of imported cases of Covid-19 has been rising in recent weeks. Of the more than 1.6 million Chinese studying abroad, at least 1.42 million students are still overseas, according to officials in China’s foreign ministry.