China has recently issued its own online education standards for trial use in a bid to promote online education, a national seminar was told Wednesday.

Experts with the Ministry of Education said the standards were formulated by the Modern Distance Education Standardization Committee under the ministry, and issued last month.

Since its first distance education system was put into operation in 1996, China has approved the application for distance education by 38 colleges and universities.

Those schools have a combined and registered student population of 160,000.

The Ministry of Education launched an ambitious program to hook up all the primary and middle schools within five to 10 years.

(People's Daily 06/21/2001)