China currently has 490,000 graduate students, including 120,000 PhDs, ranking behind the United States and Germany, according to a conference held in Beijing recently.
The conference was sponsored by the journal Postgraduates in China's Debut, which began publication on October 10.
"China now ranks first in the world in number of PhD candidates," said Wang Zhanjun, the deputy director of the Development Center for China's Academic Degree and Postgraduate Education.
According to Wang, as of the end of 2001, about 78,000 graduates had received doctorates.
China resumed enrollment for graduate students in 1978, and modernized academic degree systems in 1981, marking a new era for Chinese higher education.
Since 1998, China has registered an annual increase of 20,000 graduate students.
In 2002, of the total of 624,000 students who signed up to take the entrance exams, 159,000 were graduate students, and 37,000 of these were PhD candidates.
Some experts estimate that China will have more PhDs than the United States by 2010.
In 2001, about 40,000 students received doctorates in the United States.
(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2002)
