A teachers' school focusing on training hearing-impaired children opened in Beijing Friday- the first of its kind in China.

The Hearing and Language Ability Rehabilitation College, a new branch of the Special Education Institute for the Disabled under the Beijing United University, is expected to enroll more than 100 students nationwide this year.

It is using more than 136 professors as well as state-of-the-art teaching equipment and facilities for training deaf children.

The founding of the college will help protect the rights of disabled people, who are at a disadvantage in society, Deng Pufang, chairman of the China Disabled Persons Federation, said at the college's opening ceremony.

The college was jointly founded by the China Disabled Persons Federation, the Beijing municipal government, the Beijing United University and the China Rehabilitation Research Center for Deaf Children.

Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing donated 6 million yuan (US$722,000) to the new college.

The China Rehabilitation Research Center for Deaf Children is serving as a training base for the college.

China has more than 20 million hearing-impaired people. About 80,000 of them are children under seven, according to statistics from the China Disabled Persons Federation.

About 30,000 Chinese go deaf each year because of bad medicines, heredity, infection, noise pollution and accidents.

Proper training early on can help people regain some hearing or language abilities, said Sun Xibin, vice-director of the center.

(China Daily 09/23/2001)