General introduction:

The total number of foreign students from about 200 countries and regions studying in China has reached 328,330 in 2012, and they are reported studying in 690 colleges and other institutions across China (not including those in Taiwan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macao Special Administrative Region). The percentage of growth is 12.21% against that of 2011, with an increase rise of 35,719 in number.

Table 1

Top fifteen countries where most foreign students are from: South Korea 63,488; USA 24,583; Japan 21,126; Thailand 16,675; Russia 14,971; Indonesia 13,144; Vietnam 13,038; India 10,237; Pakistan 9,630; Kazakhstan 9,565; France 8,386; Mongolia 8,210; Germany 6,271; Malaysia 6,045 and Singapore 4,250.

Russia ranks fifth exceeding Vietnam, while Indonesia is placed sixth surpassing Vietnam, Malaysia exceeds Singapore occupying 14th place. The other countries are held the same order as they were in 2011.

Top ten provinces where the most foreign students study: Beijing 77,706, Shanghai 50,557, Guangdong 20,940, Tianjin 19,076, Zhejiang 17,461, Jiangsu 17,425, Liaoning 16,694, Shandong 13,770, Hubei 11,535, Fujian 9,541.

Statistics based on student category: the number of foreign students who take academic education in China is 133,509 in all, accounting for 40.66 percent of the total number of foreign students. Compared with the same period of last year, this figure has increased 12.35 percent, with a rise of 14,672 in number. The year 2012 witnesses an increase of 18.71 percent in the number of master's and doctoral overseas students (36,060 people in all), which includes masters (27,757 people) and doctors (8,303 people) respectively. Besides, 194,821 non-academic overseas students also study in China.

Statistics based on funding source: the number of the Chinese Government scholarship students is 28,768, accounting for 8.76 percent of the total number of foreign students; the number of Self-funded overseas students is 299,562, which takes up 91.24 percent of the total number of foreign students.

From Chinese Ministry of Education website on 2013-3-7