Number of Indian students in China crosses 13,500

The number of Indian students in China has steadily risen to over 13,500 as India ranked among the top 10 nations sending the highest number of students to Chinese varsities, amid talks for mutual recognition of degrees.
The number of Indian students coming to China have increased, and most of them come here to study medicines, while the number of Chinese students in India is holding steady, state-run China Daily reported today.
In recent years, India has remained one of the top 10 sources of international students in China, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education.
Last year, 13,578 Indian students were studying in China, compared with only 765 a decade ago.

Eighty per cent of them were following undergraduate clinical medical courses in various medical institutions in China.
Officials say low tuition fee, good accommodations and classes taught in English resulted in about 8,000 Indian students coming to China.

Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani, who visited Chinese city of Qingdao during the past four days, held talks with her Chinese counterpart Yang Guiren on several issues, including a proposal for mutual recognition of academic degrees and collaboration for teacher's training.
Their discussion focussed on setting up a consortium of higher educational institutions, and sharing experiences on the respective systems for ranking universities, it said.

Besides medicine, the second most sought-after course for the Indian students is Chinese language and culture, the report said.
The number of Chinese students in India has remained steady, but "very low", at about 2,000 for the last few years, it said.
A majority of Chinese students in India are studying at undergraduate levels in diverse subjects, with Hindi language being a favourite.
Zhong Jiacheng, a student from China's Jiangxi province, is studying e-commerce at Vellore Institute of Technology.
The 21-year-old said many Chinese students are unwilling to study in India because they think the social environment there is not very safe, especially for female students.

"In fact, it's OK, not as bad as people imagined," Zhong said, adding that there are about 40 Chinese female students at his university in Tamilnadu.