High schools in 12 more cities in coastal areas in East and South China will recruit students from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the country's northwest, a regional official said on Tuesday.

Nur Bekri, deputy Party secretary of Xinjiang, said that 12 cities in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces will open special school programs for students from Xinjiang with the approval of the Ministry of Education.

This means that 24 cities in economically developed areas in China have "Xinjiang Classes," the name of the special program. In 2000, 12 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen opened these special classes.

With the expansion, the program is expected to be able to enroll 5,000 students annually starting from 2007.

The program targets children from ethnic minority farming and herding families in the autonomous region. Xinjiang has 47 ethnic groups. The region lags behind the country's coastal areas in education because of relatively slow economic development.

Nur Bekri said the promotion of special school programs for Xinjiang children in economically developed cities is a significant step to boost the social development of the region.

(China Daily October 14, 2004)