A record 974,926 international students were enrolled at accredited two- and four-year U.S. schools for the 2014-15 school year, a 10% rise over a year earlier, according to the Institute of International Education. About one-third of those students—304,040—are from China. 

Eoin Treacy's view

Here is a link to the full article. 

While in China two weeks ago the media was abuzz with the USA’s “provocation” of China in sending ships into the South China Sea. There is no doubt the geopolitical environment is increasingly tense as China flexes its muscles and its neighbours are understandably worried. The question for us as investors is how much weight we should lend to these considerations? 

Mrs. Treacy quipped on the way home that China can’t risk open conflict with the USA because the children of just about all of the country’s high ranking officials are in the USA. Additionally, private schools and colleges host a significant number of  scions of influential families. Half of Mrs. Treacy’s graduating class from a top Beijing school now live in the USA. Geopolitical decisions are often emotional so monitoring who has children in the West’s education systems would appear to be a wise move from the perspective of intelligence agencies. 

This also helps to illustrate how integrated China now is with the global economy and that it is simply not in its interests to pursue territorial claims that would damage trade. The one caveat to that conclusion is that nationalism is a powerful propaganda tool; often used by regimes to compensate for failures in other policy areas. The only reason I can see for China to escalate its territorial claims would be to paper over a difficult domestic environment.