Chinese University Promises 'Free iPhone' Gift to All New Students

With Garden Under-enrollment Continuing, Bold Event Announced

A local university in Sichuan Province, China, has attracted attention by announcing that it will gift all incoming freshmen an 'iPhone 14'.

According to Chinese media outlet 'Xiaoxiang Chenbao' on the 23rd (local time), on the 21st, Sichuan Hope Automotive Vocational College, located in Ziyang City, Sichuan Province, announced that it will present the latest iPhone to all freshmen enrolling in the 2023 academic year this September.

The media reported that the university revealed this information through its official social networking service (SNS). Anyone who registers for admission at the university can receive one iPhone 14 for free.

When some netizens questioned whether the university intended to give counterfeit iPhones, the school clarified that the phones would be purchased through Apple's official authorized sellers and distributed directly.

iPhone 14 / Photo by Yonhap News

Furthermore, for freshmen who already own an iPhone 14 or refuse the smartphone gift, the university stated it would provide an equivalent amount in cash. The school has named this promotion the 'Freshman Special Subsidy.'

Sichuan Hope Automotive Vocational College, which launched this unprecedented event, is known as the only university in Ziyang City. It offers 20 major departments in manufacturing fields such as machinery, electrical engineering, and engineering, and is officially registered with the Sichuan provincial government and the Chinese Ministry of Education.

However, it has been reported that the university is currently facing a serious shortage of freshmen. In particular, during last year's freshman recruitment period, the vacancy number reached 1,866. There was a shortfall of 813 students in the humanities and 1,053 in engineering majors.

Because of this, the school appears to have introduced the 'free iPhone 14 gift' admission event this year to prevent under-enrollment.

Meanwhile, local media foresee that competition among local universities to attract freshmen will intensify further as China's low birthrate deepens. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the population was 1.41175 billion at the end of last year, a decrease of 850,000 compared to the previous year. This is the first natural population decline in China since the Great Famine in 1961.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.