China will send 10,000 students funded by the government to study in France in the course of the next five years, as part of an initiative to continue deepening Sino-French ties, said Cen Jianjun, director of the Ministry of Education's international cooperation and exchange department, on Friday.

The program will be officially launched after the second meeting on China-France high-level cultural and people-to-people exchanges, to be held in Beijing on May 15.

The exchange program was established last year and has achieved much in cultural and people-to-people exchanges, Cen said. Particularly impressive is the increasing number of student exchanges, he added.