A ceremony was held in the Chinese Embassy in Greece on Tuesday to issue certificates to over 100 Greek students who have passed the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test, an official Chinese language skill assessment similar to TOEFL and IELTS for English.

On May 17, 2010 a total of 134 Greek students register for the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test in Athens University of Economics and Business. Greece has witnessed rising public interest in learning Chinese in recent years, with more and more people taking the Chinese Proficiency Test.

Chinese Ambassador to Greece Luo Linquan, Chairman of the Greece-China Friendship Association Andreas Potamianos awarded the certificates to the students.

Greece has witnessed rising public interest in learning Chinese in recent years, with more and more people taking the Chinese Proficiency Test. Last October, some 130 Chinese language learning students took the HSK test, and 113 of them passed.

The first Confucius Institute, dedicated to Chinese language teaching and the introduction of the Chinese culture, was set up in Athens last October.

The Chinese ambassador Luo noted that in order to meet the growing demand of foreign people to learn Chinese and Chinese culture, China started to cooperate with foreign partners to set up the Confucius Institutes in foreign countries.

At the end of 2009, there were 87 countries in the world with at least one Confucius Institute, and some 200,000 students worldwide registered to learn Chinese in 2009, said Luo, adding that China is sending some 5,000 Chinese teachers and volunteers to more than 100 countries each year.

Potamianos said Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world, but the fact that so many Greek students passed the HSK test shows the great interest of the Greek people in the Chinese language and culture.