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AzerNEWS Staff

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China’s Ministry of Education has announced that a staggering 12.9 million high school graduates are sitting for the national university entrance examination, universally known as the Gaokao, which officially commenced on June 7, AzerNEWS reports.

The high-stakes examinations are scheduled to run from June 7 to June 10 across various specialized subject groups. In addition to testing in three mandatory core subjects—Chinese language, mathematics, and a foreign language—students must also take exams tailored to their chosen academic tracks, selecting from fields including ideology and politics, history, geography, physics, chemistry, and biology.

To accommodate the massive influx of examinees, authorities have deployed an extraordinary logistical operation, utilizing 7,981 testing centers and roughly 348,000 individual examination rooms nationwide. More than one million invigilators and exam supervisors have been mobilized to ensure the integrity of the testing process.

Widely recognized as the largest and most competitive academic examination in the world, the Gaokao has a long and turbulent history. First introduced as a unified national selection system in 1952, it was abruptly suspended during the political upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. The suspension led to a sharp decline in China's educational standards and triggered a severe shortage of skilled professionals. In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping restored the Gaokao system, a move historians credit with supplying the vital human talent needed to drive China's historic economic reforms. Since its reinstatement, more than 200 million young Chinese citizens have taken the exam.

Because of the sheer volume of applicants vying for limited spots at top-tier universities, competition remains fiercely intense. As a result, the Gaokao is regarded as far more than just a test for the students themselves—it functions as a grueling, life-altering rite of passage for entire families and educators across the country.