MEDELLIN, Colombia, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Cervantes Institute, created in 1991 by the Spanish government to promote Spanish language and culture, hopes to boost its presence in Asia, its director Cesar Antonio Molina said on Wednesday.

"We hope to open more Cervantes Institutes in Asia, in places like India, Vietnam and China. China is very important for our language, with its enormous 1.3 billion population," he told Xinhua.

"We see an enormous interest in Spanish among the Chinese," Molina said, saying that according to the Chinese Education Minister Zhou Ji, the number of Chinese studying Spanish will top 10 million in 10 to 15 years.

The Cervantes Institute now has 62 centers worldwide, and plans to open 10 more by the end of 2007, Molina said on the sidelines of the Conference of University Principals in Spanish-speaking Countries.

The conference, which began Wednesday in Medellin, west Colombia, is expected to map out a unified international system for the certification of Spanish as a foreign language.

The Cervantes Institute opened a branch in Beijing in July, and has centers in other Asian countries, such as the Philippines, Japan, India and South Korea.

Molina said the Beijing Cervantes Institute will train 500 young people to speak Spanish for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.