Taking into this account, I am here to explain the situation between PRC students here and abroad. The PRC students and scholars we see here usually comes in a few categories. The ultra smart which you see in Hwa Chong and ACS (I), just ACS(I) along we have quite a number of scholars hailing from Zhejiang and they are really good even considering themselves to be second tiered compared to those in the USA. And then we have those who are probably village kids whom parents sold everything they could just to sent their kids here and they are split into two types, the struggling but make it in the end student and the completely given up succumbing to materialistic gains and the temptations of our bustling and prosperous city-life activities.
Here we have this notion that they do not deserve here and they snatch a spot from us, but ultimately they are really good still there are some who can only do maths and science and occupy your berths in a school that you want to go or a course in University which seems a bit unfair to locals.
Here next, let me relate what happens abroad in Australia, UK, EU, Canada and USA. The kids who join schools in these countries belonged to aristocratic class, government officials, very wealthy people. Why would we say that? because school fees annually alone will require an average PRC University graduate to work 3 years to earn it capped at 110,000RMB and does not includes rental, food, textbooks and miscellaneous spending. How could they afford it if they are not rich? Here comes another catch, only 2% of them are on scholarship really bright ones. The remainder are on "DADDY-MUMMY SCHOLARSHIP". What is worst is they ended up passing not because they work for it like the ones here in Singapore, but because they buy their coursework, their thesis and even paid people to do the IELTS assessment which the Chinese government is clamping down. Rates go as high as a few hundred AUD for one coursework which I am shock there is such a market thriving and when there is exams and they couldn't pass it together with their thesis, they pay up to 150,000RMB for their cert. This is a very astonishing issue, but yes what kind of PRC you are seeing here are consider hardworking enough, we may say that some really don't deserve this scholarship but you should be pleased to know at least no matter how poor we performed in our academic performance we do not resort to this sort of accreditation.