Foreign students during a pottery class at a Chinese cultural activity in Yixing, Jiangsu, in December. DING HUANXIN / FOR CHINA DAILY

The Ministry of Education has set a target of 500,000 international students in China in 2020, but a number of obstacles will have to be overcome before that goal is realized, according to Fang. He said the lack of courses taught in English is a key challenge because many prospective students are dissuaded by the language barrier.

In Fang's experience, English-speaking countries such as the US, the UK and Australia have unparall-eled advantages when it comes to attracting overseas students, and those advantages have provided those countries with large amounts of foreign exchange.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that from April 2014 to March last year, international students contributed a record A$17.5 billion ($12 billion) to the national economy, a year-on-year rise of 14 percent.

The 2015 Open Doors Report, published by the Institute of International Education, found that the 975,000 international students at colleges and universities in the US contributed $30.5 billion, and supported more than 373,000 jobs during the 2014-15 academic year.

In comparison, some non-English-speaking countries — despite being highly developed and offering good-quality education — either have to invest vast sums to provide free education or offer large scholarships to lure students from overseas, Fang said.

China is a non-Anglophonic country, and Mandarin has a global reputation as a tough language to master, so the dearth of courses taught in English and the sometimes indifferent teaching can play decisive roles when international students are deciding where to study, he added.

Katerina Galajdova, from the Czech Republic, studied Chinese in Beijing during the 2014-15 academic year. She said Czech students are reluctant to study in China because the language barrier seems insurmountable. "Here (the Czech Republic) people don't really study Chinese, only a few people do. People learn English as their first foreign language, and Chinese is a very ‘exotic' language for us," she said during an exchange on WeChat, an instant messaging platform in China.

Galajdova believes Chinese universities should provide a more-diverse range of courses in English to make them more attractive to overseas students. "More qualified English programs and teachers would help. Programs about international trade, business, and other related topics," she said.