RISING from what was once a paddy field is a little piece of England. One year after breaking ground, the University of Nottingham will open the first foreign campus on Chinese soil tomorrow.

The 900 students enrolled at the £20 million, 96-acre Nottingham-at-Ningbo university near this southern port city will receive a British curriculum and degrees under the tutelage of imported lecturers, English-only tutorials and a replica of the Nottingham Trent tower, complete with chiming bells.

From Monday, students will begin the same courses as their counterparts in Nottingham in finance and business management, international communications and international studies.

Ian Gow, provost of the University of Nottingham-at-Ningbo, knows that he is a pioneer. “Major advantages come from being first mover,” he said. “But when you move so fast you will encounter difficulties and it’s a trade-off.”

Professor Gow represents the British partner in the joint venture with Zhejiang Wanli Education Group, one of China’s most successful educational enterprises. It was contacts between this group and Professor Yang Jiafu, a Chinese academic who became Chancellor of Nottingham university in 2000, that secured the agreement, as well as a decision by the of Education Ministry to allow in foreign universities.

The first students were accepted a year ago and began their studies on the nearby Wanli campus as Nottingham and its partner built the campus. That first intake studied intensive English to prepare them for a British degree in a second language.

The students had not only to sit an entrance exam, as is standard practice in China, but also had an interview — a rarity in a system that prizes learning by rote. Many memorised the answers they thought were expected, but for Rebecca Hughes, who heads Nottingham’s Centre for English Language Education, that was not good enough. “We made clear that they needed to express their own opinions,” she said. Some walked out when they realised that they would fail.

Nottingham-at-Ningbo is oversubscribed, even though official approval to recruit came so close to the start of term that the university had to limit entrance to the surrounding province of Zhejiang. With a population the size of France, and some of the wealthiest businessmen in China, it proved a rich source of teenagers seeking a foreign degree without the expense of travelling abroad.

Still, the fees are high by Chinese standards — at £3,500 a year for undergraduates it is ten times the cost of attending Beijing University. But that compares with £11,000 for an overseas student in Britain.

Universities in Britain will watch Nottingham’s progress with interest. Applications to British universities from China, once seen as a goldmine for international student fees, fell by 25 per cent this year.

Professor Gow has been impressed by the readiness of parents to try an untested foreign university. “The parents took a gamble on the future,” he said.

Vicky Zhang, a student, said: “My parents thought that rather than giving me a wedding dowry they would pay for a good university and then I would earn enough to pay for my own marriage.”

China may be a Communist state, but on this campus free speech is flourishing and democracy is taking root.

Professor Gary Rawnsley, Dean of International Studies, spent the summer handling e-mailed questions from students about international politics. “There are no taboos,” he said.

Elections are now under way for places on a staff-student committee. “Vote for your rights, choose your own representative,” a campaign poster says. ()

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