By 2020 Chinese universities will enroll 300,000 students from
abroad, up from 140,000 in 2005, said a Chinese educational
official Monday.
But the current 20 percent annual growth rate in foreign student
enrollments is expected to drop to eight percent from 2020, Cao
Guoxing, director-general with the International Cooperation and
Exchanges Department of the Ministry of Education, told a
conference in Shihezi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.?
"China is increasingly popular with foreign students because its
economy is booming so the number of them enrolling will continue to
increase over the next few years," he said. China recruited more
than 140,000 foreign college students from over 190 countries in
2005, added the official.
A total of 568 universities in China are qualified to enroll
foreign students and the majority of those from overseas studying
in the country major in the Chinese language and traditional
medicines, he explained.
Statistics from the National Statistics Bureau show that more
than 30 million people outside China are studying the language
including 5 million learning it at school.
Improvements in the quality of education are a magnet for
overseas students, said Guo Wei, who is in charge of foreign
student affairs at Shihezi University.
All medical courses are taught in English with multimedia
support to make things easier for foreign students, he said.
In addition the Chinese government plans to increase the number
of scholarships for foreign students to 10,000 per year from the
current 6,700 in order to attract more foreigners to China, the
official said.
(Xinhua News Agency August 8, 2006)