in november 2007, scholars and representatives from japan, korea, mainland china, and taiwan came to beijing and joined the eighth annual international conference of chinese language study. the conference was conducted and hosted by the national office of international promotion of chinese language and board of language usage & applications of the ministry of education of china. immediately after, korean media reported that the scholars and representatives reached a few conclusions after long discussion in the conference. one of those conclusions was that scholars would be using traditional chinese characters to standardise 5000 common chinese characters across the countries and would continue to allow the use of simplified chinese characters if there happened to have one across those different areas. however, chinese officials claimed that they did not reach such an agreement but would like to see the harmonious coexistence of traditional and simplified chinese. still, to many, that was the approval from chinese government because they were no longer absolutely opposed to the use of traditional chinese.