Some 3,000 young Chinese "princelings" have apparently been placed in prestigious British "public schools" (meaning fee paying and private!) and at universities including Oxford and Cambridge.
The Chinese princelings seem little different from the scions of the Russian oligarchs who have been buying up British school places for some years. They have joined other wealthy foreign elite from places such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries, who see Britain as a safe haven.
British schools make great efforts to attract foreign pupils as their ever-rising fees are now in many cases too high for the squeezed middle and professional classes in Britain to afford. Roedean, which likes to think of itself as the Eton of girls schools, is now reported to have more than 50 percent of its pupils coming from overseas.