A Chinese man's English battle

After an eight-year battle, Jiao Hongjin finally beat his English exam. He did not pass. It is just no longer required.

The exam Jiao long-considered his enemy was the Foreign Language Test for Professional Qualification, a requirement for state workers to get a promotion and higher income. But he failed eight times in a row.

However on Sunday the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council issued a circular: there would no longer be a universal requirement for foreign languages or computer skills in professional evaluations.

"My anxiety has finally gone," says Jiao, 48, a graduate employment administrator in a vocational high school in northern China's Shanxi Province.

In China, technical staff in state-owned enterprises, schools, hospitals and other public institutions are ranked by different factors, including years of service, work achievements and foreign language competence.

The rankings, such as junior, middle, associate senior, and senior, will affect, or decide, promotion, income and even worker pensions, forcing Jiao to pick up English even though he had quit learning it decades ago.

"My job is just to help graduate students find jobs. I seldom step out of the province, let alone go abroad. I do not know why I had to pass the English exam," he says.

Jiao first learned English in 1980 when he was in junior high, but senior high schools did not require an English score, so Jiao and his classmates did not pay much attention.

"I got over 70 points in the test, above average," he says.

At the same time, the reform and opening-up policy was bringing closer ties between China and the rest of the world. Demand for foreign languages was high.

Chinese labor and personnel authorities first requested foreign language competence for technical workers in 1990. Nationwide foreign language tests for professional rankings have been organized since 1999, the same year Jiao acquired the mid-level professional qualification.

A higher ranking meant a raise of several hundred yuan every month, and he took the English test for professional qualifications for the first time in 2008.

He scored 39 points, 21 below the pass threshold.

"I had always thought the test was just a formality, until I failed with such a low score," he says.

Determined, he started over, preparing for the test a month in advance the next year.

"I hid my preparation for fear of being mocked by my high-school daughter," he says.

But the following years did not go to plan, and he failed again, and again.

Eager to pass, he paid 1,200 yuan (174 U.S. dollars) for an online class to learn "techniques" for the test's multiple choice questions, and spent two hours a day memorizing English words for almost seven months until the exam on March 28, 2016.

His score of 49 drove him to despair.

"I thought 'I am too old for this. I might never get a senior ranking in my life,'" he says.

Last week's reforms finally brought his battle to an end.

Aside from the English test, Shanxi cancelled several other requirements, including computer competence, not related to technical posts.

"Now that the English test is needed no more, I am sure I will get my ranking upgraded this year," Jiao says. Endi