The Chinese mainland has 712 Sino-foreign jointly-run schools, 270 intermediate service agencies for self-supporting students who want to study abroad and 52 schools for foreign children.

More and more such educational institutions are expected to spring up over the next few years now that China is in the World Trade Organization, ministry sources told a press conference yesterday in Beijing.

The special office aims to encourage schools and service agencies to become more efficient and create a more favorable climate for their development, according to the ministry's Department of International Cooperation and Exchange.

In the last few years, many organizations, motivated by profit, have set up Sino-foreign jointly-run schools or intermediate service agencies for students who want to study abroad. Some have damaged students' interests due to poor quality teaching, according to the ministry.

"Although the Ministry of Education has reiterated that non-state schools should be a great supplement to public ones, we still feel inadequate compared with state-run schools because they are more competitive at procuring educational funding," said Li Jingjing, a teacher with the Beijing-based Northern Institute of Business and Management, a Sino-United States school that trains managers from small and medium-sized firms.

"Hopefully, the ministry's newly established office will give us additional support to survive the fierce market competition," Li told China Daily.

(China Daily February 14, 2003)