Shenzhen Yaohua Experimental School plans to enroll more overseas Chinese students from Europe and help them learn Chinese culture and enter top universities in China.

    The school plans to enroll some students from the United Kingdom and Spain this year and students from more European countries will be included next year, Principal Tu Mingzhe said.

    The students would come to study under a special program designed for overseas Chinese and would be enrolled by domestic universities through universities’ international enrollment plans.

    Two years ago, the school began offering a special class for 20 students of Chinese descent who were born and raised overseas and want to enroll in top Chinese universities.

    The school plans to invest more than 30 million yuan (US$4.85 million) in five years to educate 100 overseas Chinese students through the program. The students could apply to top universities in China after three years of free courses at the school.

    “We did well in the first two years, so Chinese organizations from many other countries, particularly European countries, invited us to enroll students from their countries and regions. In the future, we also plan to enroll scholarship students from countries such as the United States,” Tu said.

    The school’s first overseas Chinese students in the program are at the Senior 2 level, and two of the students — Huang Lida from Indonesia and Luo Bihui from Thailand — already have received offers from Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in China.

    “My family has lived in Thailand for generations and we could not speak any Chinese. However, my father always thought that Chinese was very important and wanted me to learn more about China and its culture, so I started taking Chinese training courses when I was young,” Huang said.

    Huang said Chinese education is much more strict than education in Indonesia.

    “It was very busy and hard, but luckily I coped with it well. Although I planned to enter a Chinese university a year early, I did not expect that I would get into Tsinghua University. I’m so excited,” Huang said.