Foreign universities eye Chinese PhD candidates

More than 150 professors from over 80 world leading universities and research institutes will come to China to select PhD candidates during the last weekend of November. Scheduled for Nov. 26-27 in Beijing, the annual event will be the third of its kind since 2009, according to the co-organizer -- the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). The schools and institutions come from 10 countries, namely Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States, said Zong Wa, deputy secretary-general of the CEAIE, on Wednesday. To attract more talents, those institutions have promised various favorable policies, including scholarships and financial support, said Zong. Zong noted that more than 1,000 Chinese students have applied to attend international programs as of Wednesday. A preliminary investigation among those students showed that the most desired subjects include material science, finance, life science, ecology, geo-science, biology and medicine. "Their choices not only catch up with the international trends, but also meet China's development and reform needs of the future," Zong said. According to the Ministry of Education, in the 1978-2009 period, about 62.3 percent of the 1.62 million Chinese that studied abroad returned home.