Some students, however, changed their plans.

Li Yuche is in her third year of the doctoral program at the University of Warwick, studying creative industries. She returned to China in May due to the pandemic and decided to stay and take a job in Beijing.

"I had a plan to work for a while during the doctoral program, and COVID-19 just made it happen earlier," she said.

The total number of Chinese students studying in the UK currently exceeds 220,000.

Chinese students represent the UK's largest contingent of overseas students. They contribute around 4 billion pounds ($5.17 billion) to the UK's economy annually in tuition fees and other spending, such as housing, a BBC report said.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the number of students from China who were studying at the university level in the UK surpassed 120,000 for the first time in the 2018-19 school year, accounting for more than 33 percent of non-European Union students.