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Over 13 million students take China's crucial Gaokao University exam
China on Saturday came to a standstill as millions of anxious parents crowded around exam centres all over the country as 13.35 million students wrote a highly competitive national entrance exam which will determine their future.
The National Higher Education Entrance Examination, called Gaokao, determines the eligibility for admission to Chinese universities.
Official media reported that 13.35 million students took the exam all over China this year. However, it was less than last year's 13.42 million.
Like every year, millions of parents cheered their children going into the exam centres with bouquets wishing them well and anxiously waited outside with goodies to greet them when they came out.
It is also an event during which police deploy drones and high-tech equipment to provide security and ensure the exam was held in a fair atmosphere without fraud.
To ensure smooth traffic for students, cities across China stepped up efforts with temporary traffic controls around test centres, keeping the roads clear and congestion at bay.
For students facing travel difficulties, many cities rolled out free ride services.
Some exam halls installed AI-powered surveillance systems that can flag unusual behaviour and rule violations in real time, effectively eliminating any opportunity for cheating, state-run Xinhua reported.
Considering its importance, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang went on inspection tour to middle school in Taiyuan, north China's Shanxi Province, during which he emphasised the need to uphold fairness and ensure safety in the national examination.
Since its reinstatement in 1977, Gaokao, the unified exam has transformed millions of lives through merit-based selection, the Xinhua report said, adding, As a powerful social equaliser, it reinforces the belief that with hard work and determination, any student can shape a successful future.
According to the latest available figures from the Ministry of Education, China's gross enrolment rate in higher education had surpassed 60 per cent by 2023 with more than 47 million students studying at colleges and universities that year.
Every year over 12 million Chinese graduates enter the job market which is steadily shrinking due to slow down in the economy.
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Time of India
33 minutes ago
- Time of India
Buyer with ties to Chinese Communist Party got VIP treatment at Trump crypto dinner
The Trump White House has repeatedly sounded an alarm about visitors with ties to China's Communist Party coming to the United States, arguing that they are a potential security threat. But the administration appears to have literally left the door open to a member of a Chinese government group when it went along with a plan to give the biggest purchasers of President Donald Trump's digital currency access to the president and the White House. Trump launched a so-called meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency, just days before his inauguration. To bolster sales, the president's business partners created a contest in April, offering the coin's top buyers a tour of the White House and a private dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like If You Eat Ginger Everyday for 1 Month This is What Happens Tips and Tricks One of those buyers was He Tianying, who is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, according to government documents in China examined by The New York Times. That government group, referred to as the CPPCC, is an advisory body that seeks to broaden the Communist Party's influence and solicit support from influential people in Chinese society. Live Events He, who was registered at the Trump event as a resident of Hong Kong, advises the Chinese government through his role as a delegate of the Fangshan CPPCC, a district of Beijing. He is listed as a member of the organization's science and technology committee. The Times could find no indication that He is a member of the Communist Party, and the government body he serves on is fairly low-level. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories There were no restrictions on who could buy the Trump meme coin -- which was marketed like a collectible baseball card -- including foreign nationals. But the winning buyers were given the opportunity for close proximity to the president. It is not clear why He wanted to attend. Still, at a time when the administration is seeking to scrutinize and revoke the visas of Chinese students with ties to the Communist Party, the incident illustrates inconsistencies in the Trump administration's approach to how it handles Chinese nationals, as well as potential weaknesses in the background checks the Trump administration did on the guests who bought his meme coin. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in an interview that the dinner was a private event and that government officials were not closely involved. "As the White House has always maintained, this was not an official White House event," she said. Once a crypto skeptic, Trump has done an about-face and declared himself a digital coin enthusiast, raising ethical concerns and blurring the line between his personal business ventures and the presidency. His family's company has issued its own cryptocurrency, and he has also heavily promoted the meme coin, known as $TRUMP. The meme coin dinner engendered strong criticism from Democrats, government watchdogs and even some Republicans about the appearance of monetising the presidency for personal gain. The event was arranged by the president's business partners to directly enrich the first family, even as Trump spoke that evening behind a stand emblazoned with the presidential seal. Bidders competed to accumulate the largest holding of the coin over several weeks. The top 220 won a dinner with Trump, and the top 25 also got a "VIP" tour of the White House. The buyers used self-adopted nicknames that disguised their identities, but the Times obtained copies of several pages of an official sign-in sheet for the dinner and over the past two weeks has been examining the biographies of many of the attendees. He, using the nickname Sky, owned $3.7 million worth of the meme coin, public transaction records show, at the time the contest ended. He was ranked as the seventh-largest buyer of the cryptocurrency, which entitled him to a gold-colored VIP wristband for the event. The day after the dinner at Trump's golf club, He was observed by a reporter from the Times entering the White House for the tour that had been set up by Trump's business partner Bill Zanker, who created the Trump meme coin. Zanker and the Trump family share in the revenues from the meme coin business, which has already totaled at least $320 million, according to an estimate by Chainalysis, a crypto forensics group. After the tour, He, using a social media account under his Sky pseudonym, posted a series of photos from the dinner and White House tour, which he electronically modified to cover his face. The Times was able to establish his identity through publicly available information, including photos and biographical information on his company website. He made several waves of purchases during the three weeks of the meme coin contest, according to the transaction records. "May I have the pleasure?" he wrote in one social media post, showing off his standing as one of the top owners of the meme coin, several days before the contest ended. He declined to comment as he entered the White House, and he did not respond to follow-up emails, calls and text messages from the Times. The dinner invitation sent to He stands in contrast to the statement Trump issued Wednesday, arguing that his administration needed to urgently move to block visas for certain Chinese nationals, including those attending Harvard University, as "the Chinese Communist Party has sent thousands of midcareer and senior bureaucrats" to the United States. He said this order was for "crucial national security reasons." A senior White House official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said this week that the presence of He at the dinner and White House tour was unfortunate and that overall, the meme coin dinner had created unnecessary questions. But the White House official added that it had occurred because Trump "carelessly committed" to his longtime friend and business partner Zanker that he would be a part of it. The official added that Trump was not notified who would be attending and was unaware of He's background. Supporting the party The mission of the Fangshan District division of the CPPCC, which lists He as a member, is to "uphold the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China and strengthen the common ideological and political foundation," the group says in describing one of its meetings this year. CPPCC committees are advisory bodies to China's rubber-stamp legislatures at the national, provincial and, like Fangshan, district or county levels. Members can make policy recommendations to the legislative bodies, called People's Congresses. These committees are part of the Communist Party's United Front system, which is devised to co-opt broad segments of the population, including entrepreneurs like He, into supporting and carrying out the party's policies. The CPPCC bodies also act as networking clubs. "When you are a CPPCC member, you are expected to be a part of the United Front system and carry the water where the party asks you to," said Peter Mattis, the president of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation who studies the United Front. The Times turned up documentation on Chinese government websites showing He's participation in the CPPCC group, as well as an attendance list for the committee's gathering in Beijing in January that included He's name. Chinese government records show that He is the majority owner of a Beijing-based investment firm, TechSharpe (Beijing) Capital Management Co., which says on its website that it uses artificial intelligence to "conduct quantitative investment in stocks." Recently, He has also promoted a crypto firm called LuckyFuture and has interacted on social media with Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the giant crypto exchange Binance. In a social media post, responding to an inquiry from the Times, Zhao said he learned about LuckyFuture after He reached out to him in the last few weeks. (A Binance spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) He came to the United States from China about a decade ago to get a master's degree in finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before returning to China and becoming active in the CPPCC, which is noted in his TechSharpe biography. This made He just the kind of student Trump is now targeting. But there was no hint of those kinds of fears in gracious invitations sent via email in mid-May to the dinner guests. "Congratulations!" said the notice sent to He, with a photo illustration of a muscular, smiling Trump at a dinner table, with an American flag on his lapel. "We can't wait to see you at the Gala Dinner." (He posted a copy of these emails on his social media account.) A table of foreign visitors According to a video taken at the dinner, the VIPs at just one table illustrated how many of the guests had traveled from overseas, including from China. He's dining companions included Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who was the contest's single largest buyer and one of the largest investors in the Trump family's other crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Sun also has experience as a CPPCC member. In 2016, he was named as a delegate for a committee in a district in Guangzhou, a city in southern China. Only 26 at the time, he was among the youngest people in the country to sit on a CPPCC body. "I feel that the responsibility is very heavy, and I must strive to adapt to the new role as soon as possible," Sun was quoted in state media as saying at the time. (His representatives did not respond to a request for comment.) Also seated at the table were Cheng Lu, a Singapore-based crypto investor, who told the Times in an interview outside the White House that he bought a large amount of the family's meme coin because he wanted a chance to privately meet with Trump. Sheldon Xia, the founder of BitMart, a cryptocurrency trading platform backed by China-based Fenbushi Capital, joined them at the table, along with Sangrok Oh, the CEO of Hyperithm, a Seoul- and Tokyo-based firm that manages digital assets for institutional investors. Guests invited to the dinner were "required to fill out a brief form as part of the security background check to gain entry to the event," according to an email sent to the winners. The questionnaire was created with a service called CryptoComply offered by the New York-based firm Canaria Consulting. It requested information such as name, date of birth and place of residence. The 25 top Trump meme coin holders had their names submitted to a background check system called White House Worker and Visitor Entry System, a government official told the Times. This system compares the names of the pending visitors with government databases that include terrorist watch lists and lists of known criminals. "The U.S. Secret Service is responsible for vetting all White House visitors and guests, and we fully trust their process in doing so," Leavitt said. Some guests at the dinner said they were surprised at how lax the security appeared at the event. People not on the guest list were in certain cases allowed to enter the golf club grounds that evening and remain there after Trump arrived, the Times also confirmed. "I expected more from the security questions," said Nicholas Pinto, a Florida resident and crypto trader who attended the dinner. "It was very basic. And next thing you know, I am standing there in the room with President Trump."
Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
P Chidambaram writes: War against a fused front
I submitted my column by the deadline ('That's the way the cookie crumbles', Indian Express, June 1, 2025) but was unlucky by 24 hours. The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, gave an interview on May 31, 2025 at Singapore to Bloomberg and Reuters. The timing, place and the choice of media were indeed surprising but not alarmingly wrong. The occasion was the Shangri-La Dialogue: it is a Track One inter-governmental security conference held annually in Singapore by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Singapore is a friendly country. The truth had to be told some day. I feel it would have been more appropriate to convene a special session of Parliament and for the prime minister or defence minister to make a statement on Operation Sindoor, and invite a discussion. However, it was egregious behaviour on the part of bhakts to troll General Chauhan (as they trolled Foreign Secretary, Mr Vikram Misri). General Chauhan could not have spoken without instructions from the highest levels of government. What he said was simple and straightforward: that the Indian military achieved its objectives but suffered losses. He admitted that tactical mistakes were made on May 7; that the Armed Forces' leaders had re-strategised; and India launched a fresh attack on the night of May 9-10 targeting Pakistan's military airbases. The CDS did not quantify the losses, but independent experts and the international media have put the loss as five aircraft: 3 Rafale, 1 Sukhoi and 1 MIG. The issue of 'tactical mistakes' and 'losses' require deeper and sober analysis by military experts, not uninformed noisy debates on television screens. From the information (some verified, some not) available in the public domain the following are clear: The purpose of this article is not to play amateur military analyst. It is to make the point that India finds itself in a new situation. It is now fairly well-established that Chinese aircraft (J-10), Chinese missiles (PL-15) and Chinese air defence systems were in full play in Pakistan's defence-offence strategy. The adversary was Pakistani pilots in Chinese aircraft, Pakistani fingers on the trigger of Chinese missiles, and Pakistani generals carrying out a strategic plan drawn by Chinese generals. Further, Chinese satellites and Chinese AI seem to have guided Pakistan. In short, China seemed to have used the opportunity to test its military hardware on the battlefield and fight a proxy war against India. Which takes us to the next major issue. How relevant and efficacious is the three-point doctrine laid down by prime minister Narendra Modi in the radically altered situation? The doctrine posits that India will fight a war against Pakistan. No longer. It is now clear that if a war is thrust upon India, India will fight a war against Pakistan and China fused into one adversary. The Indian war preparedness based on a one-front war or a two-front war has been blown away: any future war will be a fused-front war. Mr Modi's first rule in his three-point doctrine is that every terrorist attack will get a befitting response. A cross-border stealth attack by the Indian Army (in response to Uri) or a solitary air strike by the Indian Air Force (in response to Pathankot) were no longer deterrent responses. Hence, the response to Pahalgam was a four-day war. If terrorist attacks do not cease, what next? A longer, escalated war? A war against the fused front? India's foreign policy under Mr Narendra Modi has proved to be woefully inadequate in the changed circumstances. Despite India's opposition, on May 9, IMF approved USD 1 billion to Pakistan under Extended Fund Facility (EFF), bringing the total disbursements to USD 2.1 billion. On June 3, ADB approved a loan of USD 800 million to Pakistan. Recently, the World Bank decided to lend Pakistan USD 40 billion over a ten-year period. On these decisions, the U.S. and China were on the same side. The greatest irony is that Pakistan was elected Chairman of the UNSC Taliban Sanctions Committee and Vice Chairman of the UNSC Counter Terrorism Committee! (source: Mr Pawan Khera, Chairman, AICC Media & Publicity Department). All these happened during and after Operation Sindoor and when our MPs' delegations were briefing countries of the world. Every country condemned terrorism but, to the best of my information, no country condemned Pakistan. As I wrote last week, it is time to go back to the drawing board to re-think India's military's strategy and foreign policy. With acute minds.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
19 Brahmos, Crystal Maze missiles: Details of how India brought Pak to its knees during Operation Sindoor
Even as national security planners and military chiefs celebrated one month of Operation Sindoor on Saturday evening, HT has learned that the Defence Ministry has given the green signal to the three services to replenish their inventory with longer-range loitering ammunition, artillery shells, kamikaze drones, and beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles that out-range the Chinese missiles used by Pakistan during the four-day high-intensity skirmish. According to people familiar with the matter - and based on action taken reports and damage assessments undertaken by the three services - there is digital evidence to conclude that the Indian Air Force (IAF) fighters, surface-to-air missile batteries, and S-400 air defence system downed four Pakistani Chinese-made fighter jets and two large aircraft (possibly one C-130J and one SAAB 2000 airborne early warning system) during Operation Sindoor. There are also indications, the sources added, that two F-16 fighter aircraft may have been partly damaged during the IAF's missile assault on 11 airbases, including those at Sargodha, Rafiqui, Jacobabad, and Nur Khan (Chaklala, Rawalpindi). The reports indicate that India's Rafale fighters, S-400 missile systems, and M777 howitzers acquitted themselves well during the four-day conflict, with the Russian air defence system taking down three enemy aircraft. They also show that India destroyed one Chinese LY-80 fire radar, two AN/TPQ-43 US-made automatic tracking radars, and one fire unit of the Chinese HQ-9 radar at Chaklala during the retaliatory strike on May 10. Intelligence inputs now suggest that Pakistan has four HQ-9 (the Chinese equivalent of the Russian S-300 air defence radar systems), instead of the two originally estimated by national security planners. Also read: Four air-launched missile strikes by IAF on May 10 and Pakistan was on the mat The Pakistanis used the Chinese version of the PL-15 air-to-air missile, which has a range of 180 km. There are also inputs that the Pakistanis, by mixing two fire units of the 250 km-range HQ-9 air defence system with two other 150 km-range systems at Chaklala and Malir Cantonment near Karachi, respectively, may have tried to catch the Indian Air Force by surprise. The action taken reports also show that the IAF fired 19 BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles at Pakistani airbases, along with nearly an equal number of French SCALP subsonic cruise missiles. In turn, the Pakistanis fired CM-400 AKG air-launched supersonic missiles at Indian airbases using Chinese JF-17 fighters, but these failed to cause any damage. The Turkish-built YIHA loitering ammunition, which Pakistan fired in large numbers, was either jammed by the Indian electronic warfare suite, missed its targets, or was taken down by India's robust air defence system. Even the FATAH-1 rockets fired by Pakistan were either off the mark or intercepted by Indian air defence systems. HT has learned that there is now adequate evidence that India's first counter-terror strike on May 7 was a success. Markaz-e-Taiba (the LeT headquarters at Muridke) was hit by four to five Crystal Maze missiles, which leave a small entry point but inflict heavy internal damage. The Jaish-e-Mohammed facility at Markaz-e-Subhan Allah was hit by six SCALP missiles launched from Rafale fighters and was totally destroyed through a pinpoint strike using bunker-busting techniques. Also read: How the targets India hit during Operation Sindoor were providing support to terrorists The US-made Excalibur ammunition used by M777 howitzers of the Indian Army destroyed Tier 2 defences of the Pakistan Army across the LoC, as did India's Polish-made loitering extended-range ammunition. The Indian Air Force and Indian Navy used Israeli loitering ammunition to destroy terror camps in Occupied Kashmir on May 7. Between the launch of the operation in the early hours of May 7 and the ceasefire on the evening of May 10, Indian forces bombed nine terror camps in Pakistan and PoK and killed at least 100 terrorists. The Indian Air Force also struck targets at 13 Pakistani airbases and military installations. On Tuesday, it emerged that India's targeting of locations within Pakistan during the May 7–10 clash was more extensive than previously known, with a Pakistani document acknowledging that Indian drones had struck locations ranging from Peshawar in the northwest to Hyderabad in the south. Pakistan's Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, which was mounted in response to Operation Sindoor, 'folded in eight hours' on May 10, belying Islamabad's ambitious target of bringing India to its knees in 48 hours, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Tuesday. The action taken reports, as well as the immediate emphasis on replenishment, suggest that the Indian forces are aware, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly said, that Operation Sindoor isn't over.
