Science strengths drawing Belt, Road students

Factors that have attracted Chinese science students to US universities - scholarships, high-tech laboratories, international conferences and academic exchanges - are now drawing foreign students to China, especially from countries along the Belt and Road Initiative routes.

Victor Dike of Nigeria is three years into a four-year PhD program at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics. He signed up for the program after a short stint as a visiting scholar in 2013.

"As a climate scientist, I have opportunities to travel around the world," he said. "But if I could advise somebody who is going to study abroad, I would say China, because the research environment here is really good."