Testing times stymie student hopefuls

Overseas Chinese students perform at a gala at Jinan University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.  Provided to China Daily

Limited choice

Wang Yiyi, who was raised in Japan but has kept her Chinese passport, is a good example.

The 23-year-old didn't consider changing her nationality because of her parents' affection for the motherland. She considered taking the exam around the time of her high school graduation, but quickly abandoned the idea.

"At that time, I had never studied in China, not even for a single day. My Chinese wasn't very good and I even didn't know what China was like. It was unimaginable that I could earn a score high enough to guarantee I would be accepted by any mainland university," she said.

Eventually, she chose to gain admission through recommendation, and enrolled to study medicine at Jinan University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, which was initially founded for returnees from overseas.

Although grateful to the university for accepting her, Wang Yiyi still thinks it's a pity that there are so few ways for overseas Chinese students to gain admission to schools in their ancestral homeland.

"In Japan, both foreigners and Japanese citizens who return from residing overseas have plenty of access to higher education, while here in my home country there's not much choice for students like me," she said.

Yin Qiang, director of the Research Center on Overseas Chinese at Renmin University of China, said simplifying the admissions process for overseas Chinese to enable them to study at the best universities is of huge importance for the country's future development.

"There are roughly 60 million overseas Chinese residing across the world, but the second and third generations increasingly have scant knowledge of the motherland, because many of them have never set foot in China," said Yin, who is also a professor of journalism and communications at Renmin University of China.

He said overseas Chinese are a positive new force that could help to accelerate China's future development: "It's necessary to create convenient conditions for them to come back and attend university."