According to Xinhua news agency, China will double its budget for assistance to poor students to 20 billion yuan (2.64 billion USD) next year from 9.5 billion yuan this year.

Including student loans and donations from local governments and universities, the fund would total 50 billion yuan (6.59 billion U.S. dollars) annually from 2008, covering about four million university students and 16 million in vocational schools, said He Guangcai, an official from the ministry's financing department.

In the past two decades, most government funding went to scholarships that considered only academic performance, and not financial need. But the rise of tuition fee and living expense has became a heavy burden for many university students and their family. This year the government increased the number of beneficiaries of the state charity for poor students, from 533,000, three percent of the total, to 3.49 million, or 20 percent.

A new state scholarship has been established to support students with financial difficulties and good academic performance. It will cover about three percent of the all students.

Besides scholarships, student can seek loans for their tuition. And there is a charity fund covering all students from rural families in vocational schools where about 80 percent of students come from the countryside, most of whom have financial difficulties.

The administration also promised to cut the tuition for poor students and provide more work-study programs.

Editor: Wing