China’s Ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo

The Chinese government will continue to step up its presence in the Pacific region with more development aid.

In particular, education will be a key sector that China will ramp up.

China’s Ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo says for Fiji, scholarships are expected to double from the 40 – 50 that are currently been utilized.

“In order to provide more assistance to our friends in the South Pacific, we are going to increase, we will be providing 2500 scholarships in the, over the next five years so each year will be 500. If you divide among the eight countries because Fiji is a big country in the region, so I’m sure that Fiji will be able to get more scholarships.”

Ambassador Bo says the new numbers were agreed to in November last year under the Road and Belt Initiative.