Increasing numbers of foreigners study in China

BEIJING: More overseas students than ever before studied in China last year, an education official said on Monday, as Beijing’s growing economic and diplomatic clout draws an increasing number of foreigners. 

In 2005, there more than 140,000 overseas students studying in China, said Ministry of Education spokesman Wang Xuming. 

By comparison, around 119,000 Chinese went abroad for study last year, he added.    “2005 was the year where we had the most students coming to China to study from the most amount of countries,” Wang told a news conference.   

Most of the overseas students paid their own way, though the Chinese government gave scholarships to more than 7,000 of them, Wang said. 

Statistics show that the number of foreigners studying in China reached 140,000 in 2005, including 40,000 from the Republic of Korea, 14,000 from Japan, and 8,000 from the United States.

The total had risen by 32 per cent from the figure of 1998.

Though Chinese is becoming increasingly popular among students in Asia, Europe and North America, academics say numbers still lag the estimated 40 million people in China learning English.

No internship available

Though there are more than 1,40,000 foreigners studying in China, but they have limited opportunities for internships due to lack of relevant regulations, a senior official with the Chinese Ministry of Education said. There is only one regulation made in 2000 which allows foreigners studying in China to attend work-study programmes but there are no subsequent rules.