Much to be done

Pan Qinglin, standing committee member of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, has spent years advocating the removal of all obstacles that prevent overseas Chinese from studying in their homeland.

As a returnee himself, Pan, who now lives in the northern port city of Tianjin but spent many years living and working in Japan, said he visited many of his peers when he lived overseas. He noticed that a great many of them shared the same aspiration - to raise their children as Chinese and send them to study at a university on the mainland when they are old enough.

"People at home just can't imagine how much those living and working overseas miss the motherland and how much they wish to come back," he said. "We should pave the way for them, rather than erect barriers."

Bofei's Wang Qiang, who has run the school for 10 years, said he has known many students who, having failed to gain admission to their ideal university, have abandoned the idea and finally headed to another country.

"At first, I thought the country treated these students too harshly and that the admission standards should be lowered to help them to attend their dream universities.

"Gradually, though, I began to realize that simply lowering the standards wasn't a once-and-for-all solution because lower standards may enable these students attend their favorite universities, but what about their studies when they finally go to university? Many of them can't catch up with their classmates who have grown up and studied in China," he said, adding that some overseas Chinese students even had difficulty graduating from run-of-the-mill universities.

Wang Yiyi, the Jinan University medical student, understood Wang Qiang's concerns. She remembered taking a freshman Chinese course where the teacher asked the students to select an ancient Chinese poem and analyze it on their own.

"All of my classmates picked very splendid and complex poems. I didn't, because the only Chinese poem I know is In The Quiet Night, a very simple poem which is familiar to all Chinese people, even young kids," she said.

"I was embarrassed at the time, and I was also worried about whether I would pass the final exams and graduate," she said. "Fortunately, I passed, but my score was really low, despite the huge amount of time I had devoted to my studies."

Yin Qiang, the Renmin University of China professor, said much remains to be done to improve the situation, but it will require the combined efforts of a number of departments, including the State Council's Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, and the Ministry of Education, not to mention Chinese embassies and consulates across the world.

"For example, we need to formulate policies that will meet the diverse demands of overseas Chinese who want to attend all levels of school in China. We must also offer more guidance to the students about registering for and taking the college entrance exam, and we must provide courses on Chinese language and culture to help them become more familiar with the motherland," he said.

"Don't allow these students to arrive full of hope, only to leave full of disappointment."

Contact the writer at zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn