BEIJING: As Belt and Road construction continues to bring tangible benefits to the countries involved, China’s higher education is also playing an increasingly important role in facilitating the development of these countries through training more overseas talents.
Pakistani students are among the top in the list of BRI’s beneficiaries in the educational sector.
BRI has led to the education corridor, in line with the China, Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), said a Pakistani student Sohail Khan who is doing his doctoral studies in China this year after studying clinical medicine in Xi’an Jiaotong University for almost 10 years.
“I like China’s safe environment and convenient facilities,” Khan said.
Khan did his undergraduate studies at the university from 2010 to 2014. After a year of medical practice back in Pakistan, Khan applied for Xi’an Jiaotong University for postgraduate studies without hesitation and got a full scholarship from the China Scholarship Council in 2016.
Higher education in China for overseas students showed remarkable growth in terms of quality and scale, as more students come to China to learn advanced technology besides language and culture.
As the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, is playing a pivotal role in linking countries along the Belt and Road in terms of higher education.
In 2015, Xi’an Jiaotong University, a top university in Shaanxi Province, launched a university alliance along the Silk Road to train international talents and work as a platform for education cooperation. So far, the alliance has incorporated 151 universities from 38 countries, according to the School of Foreign Students of Xi’an Jiaotong University.
Under the framework of the alliance, the university aims to train talents according to the practical requirement of Belt and Road construction. In 2018, Xi’an Jiaotong University had a total of 2,804 overseas students from 136 countries and regions, and 70 per cent of them are from countries along the Belt and Road.