Thirty-four secondary school students from across New Zealand competed for Chinese proficiency in the annual "Chinese Bridge" competition held on Sunday.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 15 junior high school students and 19 senior high school students participated in the 14th "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition for Secondary School Students via video link.

Hosted by the Confucius Institute at the University of Canterbury, the theme of the contest is "Fly High with Chinese".

Dong Zhixue, education counsellor of the Chinese embassy in New Zealand, said at the opening ceremony that the Chinese teaching program this year has been facing a lot of difficulties due to the border closure that prevents the coming of more Chinese language teachers. However, students have still made lots of progress seen from the number and quality of contestants in this year's competition.

Dong encouraged Chinese learners to become "friendly ambassadors of China-New Zealand people-to-people exchanges", making positive contributions to promoting China-NZ educational exchanges and enhancing friendship between the two countries.