HSK 3.0

Three bands, nine levels

On 24 March 2021 China's Ministry of Education and its National Language Commission published a new framework: the Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education, standard GF 0025—2021, in force since 1 July 2021. It is the first Chinese normative text to describe a foreign learner's competence from end to end.

It replaces the six levels of the old exam with three bands of three levels each — elementary, intermediate, advanced — and measures every level on four bases: syllables, characters, vocabulary and grammar points. On top of those come five skills, which are what the exam tests: listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Translation is new to the framework.

The change is not merely a renumbering. Total vocabulary goes from about five thousand words to eleven thousand, and the advanced band alone adds more than the six previous levels put together. Today's "HSK 4" is not the "HSK 4" of a 2018 textbook.

Eleven thousand words, or eleven thousand and ninety-two

Two counts are in circulation, and it is worth knowing which one you are reading. The 2021 standard gives 11,092 words, added level by level as 500, 772, 973, 1,000, 1,071, 1,140 and then 5,636. The EXAM SYLLABUS, published in November 2025 and applying from July 2026, cuts the same vocabulary into round bands — 300, 200, 500, 1,000, 1,600, 1,800 and then 5,600 — and numbers the words in one run from 1 to 11,000.

They are two documents with two purposes: the standard describes a competence, the syllabus sets the bounds of a test. The word lists on this site follow the exam syllabus, the one candidates actually sit; the table below gives the figures of the standard.

Characters diverge in the same way. The standard counts 3,000 of them; the syllabus lists 3,088 to recognise, and adds 1,200 that must be WRITTEN — one hundred for each of the first two levels, then a hundred and fifty per level, and five hundred in the advanced band. The old exam set no such requirement.

Where the rollout stands

The framework has been in force since 2021, but the exam has not followed at the same pace, and that is what puzzles candidates. The advanced band is fully operational: HSK 7-9 has been sat worldwide since 26 November 2022.

Levels 1 to 6, on the other hand, were still being run as TRIAL SITTINGS through 2026 — a first one on 31 January, a second announced for 20 September. The ordinary calendar for the year is still that of the old exam, and no date for a general switchover has been published so far.

Two changes are already settled for those sittings. The oral stops being a separate exam: the HSKK disappears, and speaking is tested together with the written paper from level 3 upward. And level 4 becomes the announced entry requirement for studying in China.

The advanced band: one exam for three levels

HSK 7-9 does not split. Every candidate sits the same paper, and the score decides whether they are placed at level 7, level 8, level 9 or none of them. It has been running worldwide since 26 November 2022, several years before the lower levels were revised in their turn, and it is taken on a computer only.

It brings the five skills together in a single sitting of about three and a half hours: listening, reading, writing, translation and speaking. Each skill is scored out of a hundred, and the placement rests on item response theory, which locates a candidate on a continuous scale rather than counting correct answers.

The three bands

Elementary (levels 1 to 3)

Understanding and using simple Chinese in everyday life: introducing yourself, asking the way, ordering a meal, talking about your family and your habits. By the end of the band you know 900 characters and can write 300 of them.

Intermediate (levels 4 to 6)

This is the band where reading starts. The vocabulary leaves the classroom for work, health, travel and opinion; you follow a conversation between native speakers and write connected prose.

Advanced (levels 7 to 9)

One exam decides all three levels, on the score alone. It is aimed at master's and doctoral students in China and at professionals who work in Chinese: complex subjects, public life, research, translation.