Two Chinese colleges have agreed to jointly offer horse racing, for the first time, as a postgraduate program.

The two-year program will recruit 20 to 30 students with courses scheduled to begin in September 2011, said Zhang Yong, vice president of Tianjin University of Sport (TUS) based in northern Tianjin Municipality.

The students would be taught theoretical lessons from the TUS and then be offered practices and internships at Wuhan Commercial Service College (WCSC) and a horse racing base in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, according to an agreement between the TUS and WCSC, which was announced early this week.

Zhang said graduates of the program are expected to be employed in management positions in equestrian clubs and horse racing associations.

In China, the horse racing industry is developing rapidly and the sport is becoming increasingly popular, said Xia Yunjian, president of Wuhan Commercial Service College.

The country has more than 300 equestrian clubs, with some club managers earning over one million yuan (US$149,000) per year, he added.

Wuhan Commercial Service College began offering horse racing as an undergraduate major in 2007, with 300 students currently studying the business of horse racing.

Wuhan was previously China's horse racing center in the early 1900s. The sport was banned following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Horse racing reappeared in the early 1990s as a sport, instead of as a gambling venture.

Wuhan began studying the possibility of resuming horse racing in 2005. In 2008, China's central government approved race course betting at regular races on a trial basis.

The horse racing industry could create 3 million jobs once a nationwide betting network is in place. Further, annual lottery sales might reach 100 billion yuan and yield 40 billion yuan in tax revenues, according to Qin Zunwen, an expert at the Hubei provincial academy of social sciences.

(Xinhua News Agency October 3, 2010)