China will enroll 300,000 foreigners in universities by 2020, up from 140,000 in 2005, a Chinese educational official said Monday (Aug. 7th).

The current 20 percent annual growth rate in 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 here.

"China is increasingly popular with foreign students because its economy is booming, so the number of foreign students 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, the official said.

A total of 568 universities in China are qualified to enroll foreign students, and most of the foreigners studying in China major in Chinese language and traditional Chinese medicine, he added.

Statistics from the National Statistics Bureau show that more than 30 million people outside China are studying Chinese, including 5 million who study Chinese at school.

Improvements in education quality are a magnet for overseas students, said Guo Wei, who is in charge of foreign student affairs in Shihezi University, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

All Clinical Medicine 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 lure more foreigners to China, the official said.

Editor: Donald