"Each year, there are 10,000 positions for teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the world by a conservative estimate, but only 2,000 teachers are available from China," said Xu Lin, head of the office. "The greatest challenge we are facing now is to meet the surging demand for Chinese teachers."

This year, a large number of college graduates, regardless of their major, will be recruited to attend a one-year training course to teach Chinese as a foreign language, according to Xu.

China currently has a pool of over 5,000 certified teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. Last year, China sent 1,004 Chinese teachers to 80 countries and 1,050 volunteers to 34 countries.

Lower Energy Consumption

China will study ways to impose tougher tax measures for resource exploitation to curb excessive consumption, according to Ma Kai, Minister of National Development and Reform Commission, quoted by China Business News on March 19.

The current taxes, which are levied according to the amount of resources exploited, are "obviously too low," said the top economic planner in China.

"While each ton of crude oil is sold at more than 3,000 yuan in China, the cost of the tax is only 14 to 30 yuan per ton," Ma said.

In the next five years, the government will speed up tax reforms in this area, which will be an important tool to promote resource efficiency, he said.

While China's gross domestic product accounted for 5.5 percent of the world economy last year, it used energy equaling 2.46 billion tons of standard coal, about 15 percent of the world's total energy consumption.

Encouraging Charity

Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu called on the Chinese people to develop their "sense of charity" at the awards ceremony of the 2006 China Charity Awards. At the ceremony organized by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, three individuals, five enterprises and two charity programs were presented the 2006 China Charity Awards.

Hui said the Chinese people had a long history of helping each other and had shown more enthusiasm for philanthropy at a time of rapid economic development, but more efforts were needed to further promote people's sense of charity.

He said the government should work with non-government organizations and encourage individuals and enterprises to give to charity.