"China will promote Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) for young learners and three vocational HSKs in the latter half of 2005," Ma Jianfei, deputy director of the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOTCFL), said in Beijing Thursday.

"The four specialized HSKs have been tested carefully by experts and tried by more than 1000 volunteers across the world. We will put them into practice one by one after August," said Ma, at the on-going World Chinese Conference.

According to NOTCFL, the HSK for young learners is mainly for Chinese language learners under the age of 15, while the three vocational HSKs are respectively for business, secretaries and tourism.

NOTCFL will further develop the HSK test system to make it more accessible to overseas learners, Ma added.

The HSK is a series test designed to assess the Chinese language proficiency of non-native speakers and is held annually both in China and in other countries.

The Beijing Language Institute began to design a Chinese proficiency test in 1984 at the request of the Ministry of Education. The test was put in practice in 1990, and so far, 160 test sites have been established in 37 countries. More than 500, 000 people have taken part in the test.

The overseas examinees for HSK have grown 40 percent annually in recent years, according to Zhang Xinsheng, Chinese Vice-Minister of Education.

The two-day conference, with the theme of "the Development of Chinese in a Multi-cultural World", attracted nearly 600 government officials, Sinologists and Chinese learners from 67 countries and regions, among which more than 350 came from overseas.

Source: Xinhua