An international metropolis attracting the attention of people from all over the world, Shanghai has made painstaking, effective explorations and efforts in the aspect of implementing the "National Law on Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language " and has made certain achievements, seen in the evaluation made by the Ministry of Education and the National Language Committee.

Shanghai is evaluated as a "standard-reached" city in "the initial expansion of Putonghua and the basic norms of the social usage of Chinese characters", and there is no obvious linguistic misunderstanding and linguistic barrier in the communication among its people. However, because of various reasons, many problems remain, therefore the proficiency test is an important measure to implement the "double promotion" guideline and fulfill the "National Law on Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language", and it must be constantly reinforced.

According to the requirements regarding the transformation of government functions and the division of administration and events, as a governmental department, the municipal Language Committee is not supposed to directly administer the test, and the related test work must be carried out by a third party specialist institution.

Under the authorization of a related municipal department, the Shanghai Putonghua Test was established in 2002, which mainly assumes the work of organizing the proficiency test of language and character usage. It is an institution with independent legally qualified persons. The "Regulations for Implementation" clarifies the nature and tasks of the institution in the form of legal requirements: "the city should establish a specialized institution for the proficiency test of Putonghua and Chinese character usage, which is specifically in charge of the work related to the Putonghua and Chinese character usage proficiency test."