HSK 4 vocabulary: how many words, and where the official list is

The HSK (Level 4) page on chinesetest.cn gives a vocabulary figure of 1,200 words. The HSK syllabus issued in November 2025 numbers the level 4 vocabulary entries from 1001 to 2000. Counted from those serial numbers, that is 1,000 entries for level 4, or 2,000 cumulative through level 4. The two figures are different, and the level page does not say how its figure relates to the syllabus list.

What the level page says

The English HSK (Level 4) page on chinesetest.cn describes what the test covers. Its vocabulary sentence says the test assesses "an extensive vocabulary of 1,200 Chinese words". The page gives no other word count in that sentence.

The Vocabulary tab on the same page holds the word list. The saved text of that tab shows a table with four columns: Words, Pinyin, Part Of Speech and Translation.

The syllabus vocabulary list

The vocabulary part of the syllabus (HSK 词汇大纲) lists each word with a serial number. The counts below were made by this site from those serial numbers. The syllabus does not print these totals.

• Level 4 serial numbers: 1001 to 2000
• New entries at level 4, by our count: 1,000
• Cumulative entries through level 4, by our count: 2,000

Each entry in the syllabus vocabulary list shows a serial number, a level, pinyin and a part of speech.

This article does not say which figure applies to a given test date.

Where each list is

The level 4 word list is on the Vocabulary tab of the HSK (Level 4) page at chinesetest.cn.

The syllabus vocabulary list is in the vocabulary part of the syllabus PDF. That part starts on printed page 76. The PDF is published by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation (中外语言交流合作中心). Its cover gives the issue date as 2025-11 and the implementation date as 2026-07.

This article does not give a printed page number for the level 4 entries within that part.

Sources

• HSK (Level 4), Chinese Testing International (CTI), Chinese Tests Service Website chinesetest.cn
• HSK 考试大纲 / Syllabus for the Chinese Proficiency Test (PDF), Center for Language Education and Cooperation (中外语言交流合作中心)

Checked 11 October 2026

This page is an unofficial summary; it is not published by Chinese Testing International, the Center for Language Education and Cooperation or the Ministry of Education, and the official page prevails if they differ.