More Western educational institutions are seeking students from China, while the number of Chinese student studying abroad is increasing yearly.

This was the consensus of educational officials and agents attending an international education fair in Shanghai over the weekend.

The three-day China International Education Exhibition 2001 drew representatives from more than 180 institutions from 25 countries and regions, including Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

It attracted tens of thousands of potential students, exhibition officials said.

"In the near past, only universities from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan were recognizable among Chinese students," said Zong Wa, director of the China Education Association for International Exchange, the exhibition organizer.

"Such exhibitions are a good opportunity for us to increase the awareness of higher educations in the Netherlands," said Robert Van Kan, director of Nuffic Netherlands Education International's representative office in China.

The country's universities are well-known for their law, finance and agriculture studies, Van Kan said.

He said that even though Netherlands schools made a late entrance into the Chinese market, he is confident because of the high-quality, comparatively lower cost and shorter attendance span at his country's universities.

Nuffic International set up a Delta Scholarship in September to increase its attraction among Chinese students.

"We organized the top-tier Singapore universities in the show, like Singapore Management University and Singapore Institute of Management, in the hope to attract more Shanghai families," said Edward Koh, director of the Shanghai office of Contact-Singapore, a Singapore government-run Website promoting education and career opportunities.

Last year, over 80,000 students went abroad to study, including 73,000 who paid their own expense.

From January to September this year, nearly 100,000 students were granted visas to study abroad.

(Eastday.com October 30, 3001)