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So
high are the stakes and so competitive is the exam that some
students resort to cheating.
Over the years, students have used wireless cheating devices
disguised as erasers, belts and watches. Some also use tiny
earpieces to communicate with accomplices helping them outside
the exam room.
The innovations have forced authorities to step up their game in
response.
Exam centers this year have deployed metal detectors, facial and
fingerprint recognition technology, cellphone-signal blockers,
wireless detectors and even drones in their fight to root out
cheating, media reported.
Even before the exam kicked off in earnest on Tuesday, security
officers had arrested 52 people nationwide. Cheaters and their
accomplices face up to seven years in jail.
Universities in Shandong province have banned students from
taking leave on Tuesday and Wednesday, to prevent any of them
from posing as real exam takers, the official Xinhua news agency
said on Wednesday.
Cheating is more common for papers that include multiple choice
questions such as mathematics and English.
Some papers, however, such as essay-writing, confound the
cheats.
Essay-writing is an important section of the Chinese paper, and
topics vary from province to province.
In Beijing, students this year had to write about either their
vision of China in 2049, the centennial of the foundation of the
People's Republic of China, or about relationships.
Students in nine provinces were told to introduce China to
foreigners using key words like "Belt and Road initiative",
"bike-sharing", "high-speed railway" or "mobile payment", in a
test of their knowledge of economic trends.
The province of Jiangsu, notorious for tough exams, wanted
students to expound on vehicles, while neighboring Zhejiang
province demanded 800-word essays on books.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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