Recently, an increasing number of China-based companies have stepped into international markets. This increases the need for them to pay more attention to international communications to enable them to remain competitive.

The ZTE Corporation—a Chinese based international company—has become a world leading manufacturer of communications equipment, with an annual income of more than 40 billion dollars. They provide high quality products and services to more than 500 operators in 140 countries.

The rapidly developing international business of ZTE means more staff being sent abroad which requires a higher level of “multicultural amalgamation”. As a result, English has become a basic skill for their workforce. At first, the English training and assessment standard was built up by an internal department of ZTE. In 2008, ZTE cooperated with University of Cambridge.

ESOL Examinations and British Council to introduce BULATS as the third-party language assessment standard. Since then, ZTE has specially set up an English support department responsible for the operation of BULATS in the “ZTE University”.

He Meizi, the China representative of University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations said, “we are very pleased that many more Chinese corporations use international standards when stepping into global markets. We also wish to help more Chinese corporations establish their workplace English language assessment standard with BULATS, training and selecting talented staff for the corporations.”

Mr. Shao Yong, director of English Support Department of ZTE University said, “ZTE values the internationalized promotion, training and certifying of human resources very highly. BULATS is an international English language examination for the workplace, which has promoted the internationalized process of ZTE greatly by assessing the staff’s English accurately.”

All staff (and potential staff) in ZTE who deal with international businesses now take BULATS exams and thousands of staff have already sat a test.