In the past 20 years, China has sent nearly 300,000 students abroad, and those who returned are numbered 100,000 and have played an increasingly important role in China's overall development, the vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said on November 20.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the International Symposium on Returning Overseas Students in China's Modernization Drive, Li Shenming said that since 1978 when China began its reform and opening-up, nearly 100,000 overseas student have returned to China after graduation from foreign colleges and universities.

"Sending students abroad has come to be an important part of China's opening-up," he said. "Chinese students now live in some 100 countries and regions."

According to Li, sending so many students abroad is rare in the world, and the ones who came back have contributed to the country' s social and economic growth.

"Now China, like other countries in the world, is on the threshold of a knowledge-based economy," Li said. "We have set the stage for returned scholars to fully perform to the best of their ability."

Some 160 representatives of returning overseas students and personnel from Tsukuba University of Japan and Maryland University of the US attended today's symposium. The symposium was organized by CASS and a scientific research project of Japan's Ministry of Education. (Xinhua)