There is a particular kind of foreign-student nightmare: you spend years in China, learn the language, survive the dormitory, graduate with a respectable degree—and discover the diploma is not a key. It is a very expensive map to a locked building.
u/Separate_Airline_427, an Egyptian student considering AI, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, NYU Shanghai, Tsinghua, Zhejiang, and SJTU, came to r/chinalife looking for a way into that building.
“My goal is to work in China after graduating if possible.”
The question underneath every HSK plan and university ranking was brutal: if you graduate from a Chinese university, does that actually help you get hired in China?
u/Kuumikoo, a developer at a large American multinational, answered from the far end of the hiring floor.
“There is zero recruitment for fresh graduates for foreigners here.”
The OP tried the obvious escape route. What if the foreigner graduates in China? What if the degree is local, the Mandarin is decent, the CV is stamped with a serious university name?
“They don't care where you graduated from.”
It was a hiring calculation. The degree may get you into the country, but it does not answer the employer’s harder question: why take the candidate who needs extra work when local graduates can do the same job?
u/Kuumikoo supplied the answer they believed employers reach:
“There is no reason for companies to hire a foreigner for a role locals can already fill.”
The OP began looking at Electrical Engineering as a possible escape from the CS-and-AI bloodbath. u/Flat_Acanthisitta968 said EE was thought to be easier for finding work. But the thread had not changed its subject. It had only changed the department name on the door.
The Man Who Got In
Then u/noneedshow showed up with the part of the story that matters: they had graduated from one of the universities on the OP’s list and were working in tech after a bachelor’s degree.
Their path began before graduation, not after it.
“When I’m still studying I got a chance to intern at a large company through senior referral.”
The internship became a full-time conversion. The university put them close enough to be seen; the referral got them in front of the people who could decide they were useful.
“The first foot into the door is the hardest part.”
This was not a valedictorian miracle. u/noneedshow said their GPA was “mid.” The thing they could put on the table was work.
“I had a lot of projects for showcase.”
They named operating systems, networking, databases, and deep knowledge of a technical stack. The degree was the setting. The projects were the evidence.
The final trapdoor was the visa. u/InspectionStatus2674 asked whether the company had actually carried that process through.
“Yes I did get visa, it is a long process and I worried they might kick me off before I got my visa.”
Their team had never had a foreigner before. The new hire had made it past the interview, past the internship, past the conversion—and was still waiting for people around them to understand why they could not simply start like everybody else.
That is the title’s answer.
A Chinese degree can help. It can put you near the language, the alumni, the internship, the referral, and the company.
But it does not make the employer’s problem disappear.
The degree is not the door. It is the address of the building.
Source: Original Reddit post