Members of a Chinese delegation from 34 Chinese universities Thursday gathered at the Stockholm University to present themselves to the Swedish teachers and students aiming at attracting Swedish students to China.

Deputy Secretary-General of China Scholarship Council, Li Jianmin who led the delegation said that Sweden is one of the three countries where they are holding the Chinese Education Exhibition.

"Thanks to the opening policy over the past years, China's international exchange with the world has been improved, exchanges and cooperation in education has also shown fast progress, the Chinese government encourages Chinese students to pursue advanced studies in other countries, in the meantime it also extends warm welcome to international students to study in China," Liu said at the opening of the Chinese Education Exhibition at the university.

Liu said that there were over 200,000 international students studying in China in 2009. Lennart Stahle, head of the University Chancellor's Office at Swedish National Agency for Higher Education said that there has been good cooperation between Sweden and China in education.

"Chinese students at the universities are one of the biggest group of 2,500 university students last year studying different programs from undergraduate level to doctoral level," Stahle said.

Sweden will introduce fee for studying at its university next year. Stahle hopes that it won't affect Chinese students' interest in studying in Sweden and they will try to use various scholarship to facilitate students study in Sweden.

He said that the interest of Swedish students to study in China is growing.

"Last year over 800 Swedish students studied at Chinese universities, that figure actually represents a bigger proportion compared with the proportion of Chinese students studying in Sweden because Sweden only has 9 million people," Stahle said.

Zhang Ning from Education sector of Chinese embassy in Stockholm said that so far there are two students studying in China with the ambassador scholarship and another few will go to study in China this year. Chinese contest has attracted more students in Sweden and provided more students chances to study in China.

Universities from northeast China's Harbin Industry University to Southwest Jiaotong University, from Shanghai's Jiaotong, Tongji and Fudan universities in east China to Lanzhou and Xinjiang universities in west China have presented information about themselves and attract a lot of students.

The 80 people delegation will also go to Norway and Denmark to hold the exhibition.

(Xinhua News Agency May 28, 2010)