Testing of "Cloud Tibet", China's first Tibetan search engine, has begun, putting it on course for release in the second half of 2016, the developer said on Monday.

Development head Tselo said the database and the semantic unit function were both up and running.

It also has news, picture, video and audio search options.

The project was launched in April 2013. A team of more than 150 people from a Tibetan language research center in Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, northwest China, led the project

"The recognition rate of the system is over 95 percent," Tselo said, adding that around 1.2 million people would use the search engine.