Figures show that China has become the top education destination for Pakistanis as out of 25,000 students enrolled in Chinese universities; around 7,034 are studying on scholarships. Pakistani students’ number has risen from 9,630 in 2013 to 25,000 in China last year mainly because of a series of preferential policies after the launch of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of Belt and Road Initiative, according to official sources here on Sunday, March 17, 2019. At present, 6,156 Pakistani students are studying in Ph.D., 3,600 in Masters, 11,100 in Bachelors and 3,000 in Short Term Exchange Programs across China. Pakistani students are studying Chinese language, engineering, medical, computer science and various other fields. China is a popular destination for international students particularly Pakistanis for studying Chinese language and science and technology. Official figures show that about 489,200 international students studied in China in 2017 – an indicator of the country’s increasing popularity as a destination among foreign students – according to the Chinese Ministry of Education. Sixty-four percent of the students were from countries including Pakistan taking part in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. A Pakistani student, Ali Imran after finishing his Ph.D. with a major in Physical Electronics from School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology last year, joined the School of Physics at Peking University which is top ten in whole and is carrying out research with other fellows. Hailing from a small village of Faisalabad, Ali Imran completed his Masters in digital electronics from University of Engineering and Technology Lahore. He did his M.Phil in Semiconductor Physics from Centre of Excellence in Solid State Physics, University of the Punjab, Lahore and remained for the next one year as a Physics lecturer at University of Management and Technology, Lahore. “I got a very good research opportunity on advanced solar cell technology for future energy harvest at Beijing Institute of Technology. In my Ph.D. research, I proposed a new concept of Flat Intermediate Band Quantum Dot solar cell. Currently, the proposed solar cell structure has been fabricated in various labs worldwide and is under the optimization process to achieve its maximum efficiency,” he told media. About his future plans, Ali Imran shared that he intended to spend more time in the field of Semiconductor Technology with different top-level research groups around the globe. “I hope this journey of research will be interesting and will finally lead to some impressive discovery, which will be a small contribution to the progress of humanity,” he added. Another Pakistan student Muhammad Ahmad Amin is currently working on his Ph.D. in China and his latest project in finger vein detection, a technology supposed to be safer than fingerprint detection is expected to hit the public market soon. “There is a great relationship between Pakistan and China. We call it like ‘iron brothers.” The other reason is in China you can see a great amount of progress in the field of technology development. If you go anywhere in the world, in any house, you will find one product made in China, so it exhibits that China has made a tremendous amount of progress,” said Amin. A Pakistani student Muhammad Zain Siddiqi from Multan joined prestigious Tsinghua University, Beijing on scholarship and he would be completing Electronic Engineering in 2021. About his future, he said he intends to join a university as a professor after he returns to the homeland after completing his study. It is worth mentioning that various scholarships are provided by the Chinese government to lure international students over – most notably, students from the Belt and Road Initiative participating countries and regions have been facilitated to obtain scholarships under the Chinese Government Scholarship – Silk Road Program. Published in Daily Times, March 18th 2019.