BEIJING - French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe attended the opening ceremony of the French Language Year in China at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) on Tuesday with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong.

BLCU started cooperating with Alliance Francaise, an international organization that aims to promote French language and culture around the world in 1998, with the construction of a French teaching center at the university.

The center recently registered 430 students for its latest term, making this a record year for enrolment as the figure had previously never exceeded 350, said Qiao Chengwei, the deputy chief of BLCU's Overseas Study Orientation Department and vice-dean of the Alliance Francaise in Beijing.

The two countries agreed to hold the French Language Year in China during Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to France in November 2010.

"Alliance Francaise now has 15 branches in China while China has established 15 Confucius Institutes in France," Qiao told China Daily after the ceremony.

Statistics show that French language study in China is enjoying unprecedented popularity, according to Vincent Dareau, the teaching supervisor of the Alliance Francaise in Beijing.

"Our three teaching sites in Beijing enrolled more than 10,000 students last year, and we are expecting 20 percent growth this year," said Dareau.

More than 100,000 Chinese students are studying French and another 30,000 are studying in France this year, said He Guoqiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, in a speech in Paris inaugurating the Chinese Language Year in France on July 4.

Dareau said that students and professionals account for most of Alliance Francaise's language students in China, adding that "44 percent of our students are postgraduate students and 28 percent are professionals with a master's degree.

Qiao attributed Chinese students' passion for French to several factors including overseas study and career plans.

Zhao Qing, a 21-year-old senior student at Tianjin Institute of Urban Construction, said she was inspired to learn French by the novel Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).

"At first, I just wanted to read the novel's original version in French. Now, I am continuing to study at the Alliance Francaise because I hope to study landscape design in France," she said.

Ma Shengli, a researcher at the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the expansion of French language teaching in China shows France's ambition to promote its cultural reach in emerging economies, which in return would help boost bilateral trade between China and France.

"It is also a pragmatic choice for France to define its foreign policy with elements like the French language and culture," said Ma, who majored in French in his undergraduate years and started his career as a French teacher at Peking University in 1974.