On Sunday, June 7, the exams for Chinese students for admission to the country’s universities began.
The exams are known as Gaokao and this year approximately 12.9 million students are taking them.
This year’s participation showed a slight decrease compared to the participation in 2025 where 13.3 million students took part.
If one wants to see what China’s future will be like, it is enough to consider that the country’s Ministry of Education this year announced the launch of undergraduate programs such as integrated intelligence, economics and low-altitude land management, unmanned systems technologies, which according to the announcement, will meet the country’s emerging industrial and technological needs.
As reported by Chinese media, the need for talent with interdisciplinary expertise has skyrocketed.
The ministry’s latest list has added 15 interdisciplinary majors such as embedded intelligence and brain-computer science and technology.
The ministry has activated a fast-track mechanism for the development of important majors, creating a special channel for universities to launch corresponding degree programs.
History of Gaokao
Gaokao’s roots reach very deep into Chinese history.
It is considered a spiritual descendant of the “imperial examination system”. Those who have watched Chinese period series have surely seen the exams that young Chinese took in order to become scholars and succeed in entering the country’s civil service.
It was the world’s first executive selection system based on merit and knowledge rather than origin.
It lasted for over 1,300 years until it was abolished in 1905, just before the fall of the Qing dynasty.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), the first Gaokao was organized in 1952 as a unified national examination for admission to the country’s universities.
It operated normally until 1966, when it was completely suspended during the Maoist Cultural Revolution that lasted from 1966 to 1976. At that time, admission to higher institutions was made by recommendations from committees of workers, farmers, and soldiers, while universities were closed or downgraded.
In December 1977 Deng Xiaoping decided to reinstate the Gaokao as a symbol of a return to meritocracy and modern development.
The first Gaokao after the revolution involved millions of candidates competing for relatively few positions. It is considered a historic moment for millions of young people who had been excluded from higher education.
Since then the entrance exams have been constantly evolving with reforms, local variations and changes in the material, but they remain the main gateway to the country’s higher education, dramatically impacting the lives of millions of students every June.
One could say that they are a combination of ancient Chinese tradition of meritocracy and modern development tool for the country.
Gaokao 2026
This year the exams are held in 7,981 examination centers and 348,000 examination rooms across China.
This year, as every year, the whole society was mobilized: parents, teachers and even celebrities through social media sent messages of sympathy and support.
The results are expected to be announced at the end of June.
It is one of the most competitive examination systems in the world, combining tradition with modern meritocracy.
It should be noted that Chinese universities are able to absorb about 80% of participants, but really good places at top universities such as Tsinghua, Peking University and Project 985/211 are few and far between.
Only about 500,000 are admitted to the country’s top universities. For elite institutions the competition is even tougher than that of Harvard.
The grade that each student will get decides the university to which he will be admitted and later his income and social status.
Getting into a good university means better job prospects, financial prosperity and even perks like housing and health care benefits.
In a country with high youth unemployment and intense job competition, Gaokao functions like a “tournament”, where the best win the big prizes.
For this reason, Chinese parents invest even 20% of their income in preparing their children from a very young age.
In short, the Gaokao is highly competitive not only because of the difficulty of the exams, but also because of the proportion of millions of young people fighting for limited “golden” positions, in a society where education remains the main way up.
Aiming at the future
Especially this year, the country’s Ministry of Education is focusing on adapting to the digital and technological future and producing talent for national strategies related to Artificial Intelligence, green energy and other high-tech sectors.
The new directions are part of a larger vision for China to become an “educational superpower” by 2035.
Gaokao 2026 is considered to be more flexible, more connected to the future and more oriented towards real understanding of the material rather than memorization.
