China plans to sign more agreements on the mutual recognition of academic degrees with other countries, according to an educational official.

"We hope that by 2020, such mutual recognition agreements could cover most countries of the world, particularly the developed ones," said Xu Tao, director of the Ministry of Education's department of international cooperation and exchanges.

Xu made the remarks at the 17th China Annual Conference for International Education, which kicked off in Beijing on Thursday.

The conference was organized by the China Education Association for International Exchange with support from the Education Ministry. Each year, the conference works to promote study in a foreign country. This year, Ireland was selected.

Xu said such mutual recognition agreements represented other countries' acceptance and recognition of the quality of China's higher education, and could accelerate bilateral cooperation between countries beyond the education field.

Since entering into its first mutual recognition agreement with Sri Lanka in 1988, China has inked similar deals with 46 countries across the world, including Russia, Britain and France.

This year alone such agreements have been reached with Poland, Indonesia and the Czech Republic.