Of course the act is controversial, but it's more interesting to look at why it's happening. No, it's no "racism". There are plenty of Chinese students in Japan

Of course the act is controversial, but it's more interesting to look at why it's happening. No, it's no "racism". There are plenty of Chinese students in Japanese university labs at graduate level. It depends on the branch, but for some speciality it's not rare to have half of graduate students being Chinese. Master degrees and PhD are no very attractive to the native since a bachelor is already almost a guarantee to get a good job, so I an way Japanese research is done on the back of international students, including a lot of Chinese. The thing is Japan universities have an issue with the number of (good) Chinese students applicants. They already have some special rules, but they can't be too special either. Which mean that without further tweaks, almost no other international applicants would get accepted. University already raised the requirement to the level of Japanese for exchange students a decade ago for that reason, but that didn't solved anything since Chinese writing and vocabulary plus education style give them an edge to reach the highest levels of JLPT easier than other foreigners.