By 2020, the total number of foreign students studying in China will exceed 500 thousand, said Secretary General of the National Advisory Committee on Education and former head of the Research Center for Educational Development under the Ministry of Education of China, Zhang Li.
According to him, in 2017, 489,200 foreign students from 204 countries and regions of the world studied in China. China has already become the third largest in the world and the largest country in Asia in terms of the number of foreign students.
Zhang Li said that China invested 3.3 billion yuan in support of about 60,000 foreign students. Meanwhile, income from foreign students, received by the Chinese economy, amounted to 35-40 billion yuan, reports "Rénmín Rìbào".