Beijing - China is planning to attract more overseas students for degree courses over the next 10 years as a major effort to promote its cultural soft power, Vice-Minister of Education Hao Ping said on Tuesday.

"Though the number of international students in China hit a record high of 240,000 last year, only about 40 percent of them are staying for degree courses," he said at a work meeting.

"We plan to attract 150,000 international students for degree courses in higher education in 2020," he said.

The target was written into a document unveiled at the meeting to encourage more overseas students to study on a variety of courses in China, with a plan of attracting 500,000 of them in 2020.

China should become the "biggest destination" for foreign students to study in Asia in 2020, said the document.

About 60 percent of foreign students in China are studying the Chinese language and 13.5 percent of them are studying medicine, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education.

Since the 1950s, China has received a total of 1.69 million foreign students.

The central government will steadily increase the availability of national scholarships, as well as encourage greater involvement by provincial governments, schools, enterprises and social organizations in offering scholarship programs, according to the document.

Hao pointed out that China has continued to expand the Government Scholarship Program to help international students in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and the global economic crisis in 2008.

The Chinese central government provided 800 million yuan ($117 million) in scholarships to international students this year and the provincial governments offered about 110 million yuan in scholarships, according to the ministry.

"Other channels for scholarships have been opening up, as self-funding foreign students are set to become the largest overseas group in China and enterprises have acquired greater awareness of how to attract high-caliber applicants in recent years," he said.

Since 2007, some State-owned enterprises and private firms have set up scholarship programs for overseas students, including PetroChina, China Development Bank and Huawei Group.

The document also pointed out the need to train a large number of first-rate teachers, who can teach in fluent English and optimize courses for international students before 2020.

"We should provide a series of degree courses taught in English, which will enable international students to have more choice in the future," the vice-minister said on Tuesday.

By Chen Jia (China Daily)