BEIJING - FOUR Chinese universities will begin extending preferential enrollment policies for talented baseball athletes, promoters said on Thursday, in a bid to boost the sport's growth in the world's most populous country.

The schools, all located in the country's more developed east, will lower the minimum academic requirements for entry to athletes who show promise, said a joint news release from the Chinese Baseball Association and QSL Sports Limited, which was named this month as the association's partner in the China Youth Baseball League.

Promoters hope that will encourage parents to enter their children in baseball programs as a way of boosting their chances of getting into college, it said.

'The fact is, overnight, playing baseball has turned into something that can improve the talented child's chances of getting into a good university,' said QSL Chairman Jianhua Huang, who is also leading a Chinese investment group in buying a 15 per cent stake in the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers.

China has a seven-team professional baseball league and the national association says about 1,000 schools, including 140 at the tertiary level, have teams.

Still, few Chinese know much about the sport and games are rarely shown on television. Worse still, baseball has been cut from the Olympic program, giving the country's medal-obsessed sports officials little incentive to back it.

Schools offering preferential admissions were listed as the Shanghai International Studies University, Beijing's North China University of Technology, the Nanjing University of Technology, and Shanghai's East China University of Political Science and Law. -- AP