No State-aid Loan Afforded to Students of Civilian-run Colleges

According to the People's Bank of China, students in civilian-run colleges are not qualified to enjoy the state-aid-loan for their studies but they can apply for commercial loans.

Fifty percent of the interests of the state-aid loans are subsidized by treasuries at all levels of the state organs and students who borrow the loans only have to pay off the capital and the other half of the interests.

The state-aid loans to students, offered by the four commercial banks as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and others are provided with discounts. This is applicable only to undergraduates, students for specialty-studies and postgraduates (excluding those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) who are having full-time study in institutions of higher learning yet are economically hard up.

The commercial aid loan refers to the loans issued by financial institutions to students receiving non-compulsory education, or to their lineal relatives or legal guardians only for paying off the tuition fee, life expense and other related costs in studies. The commercial loans do not receive financial discount by the state.

Sources say that the institutions of higher learning run by the state or local authorities have different charging system for tuition fee with that run by civilians. The former enjoy subsidies by the state and the tuition fee is relatively low while the latter do not. They charge high and that's why the civilian-run colleges can not enjoy financial subsidies by the state.

The People's Bank of China encourages all commercial banks to provide commercial loans by credit to students with a low possible interest rate.

The state-aid loans with discount provided by the state have, up to now, extended from the eight cities for experimentation to the whole country and the banks offering such loans from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Construction Bank of China.



People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/