Celebrations were held in Beijing on Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of China Radio International’s (CRI) Tamil language service.Several officials who founded the service on August 1 1963 attended the session at the Indian Embassy together with diplomats from several Tamil speaking countries.

Over the years, commentators say the broadcasts have provided vital news and entertainment to large populations of Tamil speakers living in India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the world.

Beginning as just a 15 minute daily show, the service has expanded to eight hours a day (four hours on shortwave and another four on FM in Colombo, Sri Lanka).

CRI says the Tamil service still receives 500 thousand listener letters every year and enjoys support from more than 350 listener clubs around the world.

In recent years, multimedia services have been added, including mobile services in April this year.

“We get hundreds of messages every day which shows how popular our programmes are,” said Zhao Jiang, head of CRI’s Tamil service.

“We have radio, video, mobile, a website and magazine.  In future, we will put more emphasis on new media and multimedia, including our apps for iphone and android.”

CRI is also planning to educate Tamil speakers about China through mobile apps.

According to Indian media, the service is mostly run by Chinese students who have learnt Tamil at University, with assistance from native speakers.

China Radio International broadcasts in more than 50 languages.