China has educated 4.2 million Master's and 500,000 PhD students since the initiation of the reform and opening-up policies, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Saturday.

Huang Baoyin, an official from the Ministry of Education, said at a forum in Beijing that China's graduate programs have developed rapidly in the past 35 years, especially since 1999.

"However, our PhD programs still face problems such as the quality of our PhD programs could not quite catch up with the programs in the Western countries," said Huang.