The Beijing government has established a scholarship fund for students from countries along the One Belt and One Road initiative for studies in the Chinese capital.
The municipal government set up a "Belt and Road Scholarship" on Monday to fund academic programs in fields like aviation, railway operation, law, finance, electronic information engineering and traditional Chinese medicine.
The scholarship program will fund a number of selected programs each year. In 2017, 11 programs from 11 municipal-level colleges and 21 programs from 21 universities directly administrated by the Ministry of Education will receive the funding, benefiting 502 students.
Due to limited financial capacity, many foreign students rely on Chinese government scholarships or other funds while studying in China.
With enhanced support from the Chinese government, more students from developing countries will have the opportunity to study in China's best universities.
"Higher education is an important resource. In the past, only developed countries could provide this resource to the rest of the world, but due to the limited [number of] universities and high costs, students from developing countries who can study in the West are also limited. But now, those students have one more choice," said an Iraqi post-graduate student surnamed Hosseini who studies at Peking University.
"If my younger friends or family ask me for suggestions for overseas studies, I would suggest that they try Chinese universities. And I will tell them Chinese universities are not easy to apply [for], because universities like Peking and Tsinghua compete with the ranking, reputation and academic standards of many top Western universities," he added.
The Beijing government has established a scholarship fund for students from countries along the One Belt and One Road initiative for studies in the Chinese capital.
