Testing times stymie student hopefuls

As China's schoolchildren sweat over the national college entrance examination, overseas-based Chinese hoping to study at the country's top universities are finding that their ambitions are being dashed by regulations originally designed to help them. Zhao Xinying reports.

Chinese citizens living overseas are finding their path to higher education blocked in their ancestral homeland, and a measure that was specifically designed to meet their needs is the biggest stumbling block to academic success.

There are generally two ways for overseas-based Chinese to study in the motherland: They can apply for admission to two designated universities for overseas Chinese via a recommendation from their high school, or they can take a college entrance exam especially formulated for Chinese living overseas and then try to gain admission to a university on the basis of the result.