China will establish its fifth Chinese language teaching college in France this year to promote Chinese culture overseas.
  
The prestigious Wuhan University in central China's Hubei Province took the responsibility to jointly set up the college, which is named after the world-renown Chinese philosopher Confucius, with the Universite de Paris 7 Denis Diderot in France, said Peng Yuanjie, director of Wuhan University's international education college on Friday.
  
The college, which is scheduled to open in the second half of this year, will compile special textbooks for local students and Wuhan University will send experts to take part in the teaching and administration of the college, said Peng.
  
The reason why we chose the Universite de Paris 7 as a partner is because it already had a department of Chinese learning and it is one of the overseas sites for the Chinese Proficiency Test set up by China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, he said.
  
More than 25 million foreigners are learning Chinese and the figure is likely to hit 100 million within 5 years as more teachers and facilities will be available, according to the Ministry of Education.
  
The ministry said at its website that some 139 Chinese language test centers have received around 370,000 participants and more than 2,300 colleges of some 100 countries offer Chinese language courses.
  
As an important channel to promote the education and exchange of Chinese culture, the first Confucius College was set up in the Republic of Korea set up in December 2004. The Ministry of
Education plans to establish 100 such colleges worldwide.

(Xinhua News Agency April 25, 2005)