BEIJING, July 8 (Xinhua) -- China launched a portal Website, www.linese.com on Saturday to offer Mandarin learning courses and supplementary materials online to meet surging demand of Chinese learning across the world.

Zheng Zhongxiu, head of the Website, said "The Website features multimedia technologies including on-line interactive courses, virtual communities, and communication with blogs, pods and Wikis rather than traditional classroom instructions for Mandarin learning."

If users log on the Website, they could enter a special virtual community which sets the scene in Beijing's Siheyuan, a compound with houses around a square courtyard, from where registered users can communicate with each other and learn Chinese through the specially designed games.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education show more than 30 million people worldwide are learning Chinese and more than 2,500 universities in 100 countries and regions offer Chinese courses.

"With an increasing number of foreigners studying Chinese in their own country instead of in China, traditional classroom instructions alone cannot cope with the huge demand," China's Education Minister Zhou Ji said at the Confucius Institute Conference which concluded on Friday.

"Thus, modern information technology and multi-media online instructions will be used more extensively to meet the learning demand," he said.

Sponsored by China's National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL), the Website aims to offer online learning, training, volunteer help and information search services and various learning resources.

And the Website also bears links with scores of overseas Confucius institutes which specialize in promoting Chinese learning and Chinese culture, according to Zheng.

"The Website currently only has web-page in Chinese and English, but our staff are working on the Korean and Japanese versions right now," Zheng said, adding that they will develop more varied versions to facilitate users with different backgrounds. Enditem