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China is trying to stanch the loss of students sent abroad by requiring them to post a bond of up to $6,000 beginning next year, the official New China News Agency reported Tuesday.
China will pay for 3,420 people to study abroad next year, an increase of 1,000 from 1997, the agency said. Most are to study engineering, medicine, sciences and the arts.
Many students never return to China, where salaries, living conditions and the political climate generally are less attractive than in the host countries.
For a country with an average per capita income of $529, the bond is an incentive to return because students who don’t do so would lose their deposits.
Those who return will get their deposits back with interest, the news agency reported.
