Xi'an Jiaotong University's Child Prodigy class celebrates 30 years

The Child Prodigy Class launched by Xi'an Jiaotong University, one of China's top universities based in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, is celebrating its achievements of selecting and training those with exceptional intelligence over the past 30 years.

The class, one of only two such classes in China, was established in 1985 with the approval from the Ministry of Education, and has trained 804 graduates, of whom over 80 percent got master's and doctoral degrees, and of which more than 20 have become tenured professors at the world's leading universities, according to Wang Shuguo, president of the university.

"It is a very valuable and very effective attempt for realizing our Chinese dream that the juvenile class created by Xi'an Jiaotong University continued its exploration and innovation," Wang said.

Wu Aihua, director of the Ministry of Education's science and engineering department, said that the great effort in selecting and training talents made by the university and the juvenile class have important strategic significance for China to encourage innovation in the country.

In the past 10 years, according to the president, the training mode of the juvenile class has been adjusted to improve the training system and increase the number of enrolled students.

"The enrolled students increased to 120 from 30 annually and by now, a total of 1,564 have been enrolled in the class," Wang said.

Xi'an Jiaotong University was established in 1896 and is one of the schools with the longest history in Chinese higher education. It moved from Shanghai to Xi'an in 1956. During the past 120 years, the university fostered a number of luminaries including Jiang Zemin, former president of China.