China tops world in MOOC application: minister

China has created the largest pool of massive open online courses (MOOCs) with the largest scale of application, according to China's Education Minister Chen Baosheng.

In less than eight years, China had more than 34,000 MOOCs, attracting about 540 million online learners, said Chen in his keynote speech delivered at the Global MOOC Conference held earlier this week.

Chen also called for global efforts to build an open and inclusive MOOC environment based on win-win cooperation, strengthen the sharing and application of online educational resources, and promote individualized and life-long study.

The conference was co-hosted by the Beijing-based Tsinghua University and the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education.

During the conference, an alliance for global MOOC cooperation was launched and a declaration on MOOC development was published.