In 1991 there were 2, 000 foreign learners taking China's official Chinese Proficiency Test ( comparable to the English Cambridge Certificate ), while in 2005, the number of candidates had risen sharply to 117, 660 .< ref > " 汉语水平考试中心 ： 2005年外国考生总人数近12万 ",< sup > Gov. cn </ sup > Xinhua News Agency, January 16, 2006 .</ ref >

A rapid rise in the number of mainland visitors due to China's easing of travel restrictions, increased public works expenditures, and significant investment inflows associated with the liberalisation of Macau's gaming industry drove the five-year recovery.

China's borders have more than 20, 000 km of land frontier shared with nearly all the nations of mainland East Asia, and have been disputed at a number of points.

The number of mobile phone web users in China was 73. 05 million by June 2008, making up about 30 % of China's 253 million internet users.

During a 2008 interview with the BBC, Major General Qian Lihua, a senior Chinese defense official, stated that the PLAN aspired to possess a small number of aircraft carriers to allow it to expand China's air defense perimeter.

The municipality as a whole consists of a peninsula between the Yangtze and Hangzhou Bay, mainland China's second-largest island Chongming, and a number of smaller islands.

Wu Bangguo, officially number two in China's leadership structure, said in 2011 there will be no federal system in China.

As in India, China's economic surge has resulted in a massive increase in the number of private vehicles on its roads overwhelming the transport infrastructure.

In order to mediate Lin's growing power, Mao approved Zhou's efforts to rehabilitate a number of civilian officials who had been purged during the first years of the Cultural Revolution, and supported Zhou's efforts to improve China's relationship with the United States.

Zhejiang University was split up into a number of single-discipline colleges during the 1952 readjustment of China's Tertiary Education System.

In 2010, according to an official survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and published in the 2010 Bluebook Annual Report on China's Religions, the number of Protestants in China is 23. 05 million, or 1. 8 % of the total population.

Since then, the airline acquired and merged with a number of domestic airlines, becoming one of China's " Big Three " airlines ( alongside Air China and China Eastern Airlines ).

The number of foreign students studying in China has also increased rapidly ; in 2004, over 110, 000 students from 178 countries were studying at China's universities.

The producer was an American, Benjamin Brodsky ( sometimes transliterated ' Polaski '), one of a number of Westerners who helped jumpstart Chinese film through their efforts to crack China's vast potential market.

Nonetheless, the number of Chinese housewives has been steadily rising in recent years as China's economy expands.

The largest number of them were in the military, which complained about having its budget cut from 10 % of China's total GDP in 1978 to 5 % by 1982.

Due to rapidly expanding wealth and prosperity, the number of coal power plants and cars on China's roads is rapidly growing, creating an ongoing pollution problem.

A number of such stone monuments have preserved the origin and history of China's minority religious communities.

China's Muslim have a number of steles of considerable antiquity as well, often containing both Chinese and Arabic text.

It was at that time where the wall received a significant number of posters that criticized China's leaders.

Zhao was not selected to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a victim of China's great depth in women's badminton and rules that limit the number of Olympic entries from any one country.

The number of China's urban street children is growing, with the Ministry of Civil Affairs estimating the number at 150, 000.

The one child policy has also been speculated to be the underlying cause of forced abortions, female infanticide, underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China's increasing number of crimes and gender imbalance.

I assume that the number of readers of this anthology who regard themselves as morally perfect is small, and that most readers are willing to consider procedures by which they may gain more insight into themselves and better understanding of others.

Although the United States and the U.S.S.R. have been arguing whether there shall be four, five or six top assistants, the most important element in the situation is not the number of deputies but the manner in which these deputies are to do their work.

The ledger was full of most precise information: date of laying, length of incubation period, number of chick reaching the first week, second week, fifth week, weight of hen, size of rooster's wattles and so on, all scrawled out in a hand that looked more Chinese than English, the most jagged and sprawling Alex had ever seen.

An examination of some forty catalogs of schools offering courses in interior design, for the most part schools accredited by membership in the National Association of Schools of Art, and a further `` on the spot '' inspection of a number of schools, show their courses adhere pretty closely to the recommendations.

In a brief chapter dealing with `` Various Other Diagnoses '', he quotes isolated passages from some writers whose views seem to corroborate his own, and finds it `` most remarkable that a critical view of twentieth-century society was already held by a number of thinkers living in the nineteenth.

Such understanding helps to explain why one matron celebrating thirty-five years of married life could declare with some pride that her husband had `` never seen her entirely naked '', while another woman, boasting an equal number of years of married life, is proud of having `` shared the nudist way of life -- the really free, natural nude life -- for most of that period ''.

The spokesman said the number to be furloughed cannot be estimated since the lay-offs must be carried out in each area depending on what men are most needed on the job.

There can be no doubt that the American Catholic accomplishment in the field of higher education is most impressive: our European brethren never cease to marvel at the number and the size of our colleges and universities.

Indeed, mathematically speaking, it was both functionally and symbolically the most important number in the entire diagram.

The existing reverence for Centrality must have been still further stimulated toward the close of the second century B.C., when the Han Emperor Wu Ti ordered the dynastic color changed to yellow -- which symbolized the Center among the traditional Five Directions -- and took 5 as the dynastic number, believing that he would thus place himself, his imperial family, and the nation under the most auspicious influences.

A few drops of rain just before midnight, when Sarah Vaughan was in the midst of her first number, scattered the more timid members of the audience briefly, but at this hour and with Sarah on the stand, most of the listeners didn't care whether they got wet.

The exact number and placement of Endosymbiotic theory | endosymbiotic events is currently unknown, so this diagram can be taken only as a general guide It represents the most parsimonious way of explaining the three types of endosymbiotic origins of plastids.

Thus although most species in the order are herbaceous, some no more than 15 cm high, there are a number of climbers ( e. g. some species of Asparagus ), as well as several genera forming trees ( e. g. Agave, Cordyline, Yucca, Dracaena ), some of which can exceed 10 m in height.

The order is a cosmopolite ( plants found throughout most of the world including desert and frigid zones ), and includes mostly herbaceous species, although a small number of trees ( such as the giant Lobelia and the giant Senecio ) and shrubs are also present.

In addition to this standard variety, in everyday life most Austrians speak one of a number of Upper German dialects.

One of the most interesting aspects of the axiom of choice is the large number of places in mathematics that it shows up.

Six astatine isotopes, with mass numbers of 214 to 219, are present in nature as the products of various decay routes of heavier elements, but neither the most stable isotope of astatine ( with mass number 210 ) nor astatine-211 ( which is used in medicine ) is produced naturally.

A number of species have come to be considered invasive, including, most notably in North America, dandelion, which was originally introduced by European settlers who used the young leaves as a salad green.

There have been a number of radio adaptations of the Poirot stories, most recently twenty seven of them on BBC Radio 4 ( and regularly repeated on BBC 7 ), starring John Moffatt ( Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis have also played Poirot on BBC Radio 4, Mr. Denham in The Mystery of the Blue Train and Mr. Sallis in Hercule Poirot's Christmas ).

One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests.

Alpha decay is by far the most common form of cluster decay where the parent atom ejects a defined daughter collection of nucleons, leaving another defined product behind ( in nuclear fission, a number of different pairs of daughters of approximately equal size are formed ).

APL ( named after the book A Programming Language ) is an interactive array-oriented language and integrated development environment, which is available from a number of commercial and noncommercial vendors and for most computer platforms .< ref >

Agate is one of the most common materials used in the art of hardstone carving, and has been recovered at a number of ancient sites, indicating its widespread use in the ancient world ; for example, archaeological recovery at the Knossos site on Crete illustrates its role in Bronze Age Minoan culture.

A very small number of his instruments survive, dated between the years of 1560 and 1574 and most bearing the coat of arms of Charles IX of France.