Students arrive at the exam sites of  Beijing No. 8 High School, accompanied by their teachers and parents, for the 2026 national college entrance exam, also known as the gaokao, on the morning of June 7, 2026.  Photo: Li Hao/GT

With China's national college entrance exam, also known as gaokao, kicking off on Sunday, authorities have mobilized a wide range of resources — from traffic control and noise-reduction measures to AI-powered anti-cheating systems and emergency medical services — to ensure a fair and smooth examination process for candidates facing one of the most consequential tests of their lives. As universities seek to meet the country's emerging strategic and industrial needs, around 12.9 million candidates will potentially have access to more academic options, with a raft of new majors such as embodied intelligence and brain-computer science being introduced.

At Beijing No. 8 Middle School, students and parents began gathering outside the testing center hours before the first exam. Among the crowd were mothers dressed in qipao, a traditional Chinese dress often worn during the gaokao season as a symbol of good luck. Police officers and community volunteers offered assistance and distributed messages of encouragement, while a temporary service station helped students resolve last-minute identification issues.

Students arrive at the exam sites of Beijing No. 18 High School, accompanied by their teachers and parents, for the 2026 national college entrance exam, also known as the gaokao, on the morning of June 7, 2026.  Photo: Cui Meng/GT

Across China, local governments have mobilized resources to support the students taking this year's gaokao. In Yuncheng, North China's Shanxi Province, testing centers have been equipped with cooling facilities, backup audio systems and round-the-clock medical support. Outside the exam venues, authorities have stepped up traffic management, noise control and food-safety inspections in an effort to ensure that students can focus on one of the most consequential exams of their lives.

Among this year's gaokao candidates was Xiaoya (pseudonym), a student with cerebral palsy from Yesanguan county in Hubei Province. To help her complete the exam, her school organized a dedicated support team, arranged door-to-door transportation and secured approval for an additional 30 percent of testing time, ensuring she could sit the exam under fair and accessible conditions, Qilu Evening News reported.

A record 12.9 million students have registered for this year's gaokao, with 7,981 testing centers and about 348,000 examination rooms set up across the country. Chinese language and mathematics are the subjects tested on the first day of the exam, media reported.

Multiple Chinese universities have rolled out new undergraduate programs such as embodied intelligence, low-altitude economy and management, as well as marine intelligence and unmanned technologies, seeking to meet the country's emerging strategic and industrial needs, according to an updated catalog recently issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE).

The addition of these new majors underscores continued improvement in the structure of academic disciplines, said Zhang Nanxing, director of the Institute of Higher Education at the China National Academy of Educational Sciences.

In a notice published on June 6, the MOE reminded candidates to observe exam discipline and refrain from bringing mobile phones, smartwatches, smart glasses or other wireless communication devices into testing centers, requiring any such items to be stored at designated locations before entering examination rooms.

To curb cheating during the gaokao, testing centers across China have deployed technologies including AI-powered monitoring systems and smart security screening gates.

In Beijing, candidates have been explicitly barred from bringing smart glasses into testing venues, while in Guangzhou, security gates have been upgraded to better detect concealed wearable devices. AI monitoring systems used in many examination rooms can automatically flag unusual behavior by candidates or invigilators and generate video clips for further review, according to China Central Television.