More than 4.58 million Chinese students had studied or were studying overseas from 1978 to 2016, according to a report published Monday.
Published by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a major Chinese think tank, the report said that 544,500 Chinese students studied abroad in 2016, up 3.97 percent from the previous year.
As of 2016, China was still a major source of international students studying in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom, according to the report.
It showed that over 31 percent of Chinese students chose to study business administration in 2016, a 4-percent increase compared with 2015, and 16 percent chose to study engineering science the same year, down 3 percent from the previous year.
Meanwhile, the number of Chinese high school students studying in Canada accounted for more than half of the total international high school students in the country.
The report showed that China has around 550 international schools, more than any other country.
In addition, China saw 11.3-percent growth in foreign student enrollments last year, with the number reaching 443,000, according to the report.
