At the present time, around 95% of all Chinese nurses
are trained for 3 years at a health school following 9 years
of primary and secondary schooling. Most of these schools
are attached to hospitals and the majority of entrants come
directly from junior high school. Senior high school graduates
are usually offered an equivalent 2 or 3 year course in
nursing at the same facility (Chan & Wong, 1999). These
schools graduate about 40, 000 nurses per year. By 2000,
there were 530 such institutes, comprising the vast majority
in China. A higher level university diploma in nursing was
re-introduced in the 1980s, of which there are now 99 programs
(Hong & Yatsushiro, 2003).