More than 9 million students will sit this year's national college entrance examinations, or gaokao, that kick off on Wednesday.
A total of 9.4 million students will take the exams in 2017, about the number that took them in 2016, but about 20,000 less than in 2015, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE).
The authorities said last year that the drop in the number of annual exam sitters may have been caused by more students being granted early admission to colleges without taking the exams and more applying to overseas universities that do not require candidates to sit the gaokao.
A total of 90 domestic universities, including the top Tsinghua and Peking universities, have announced their lists of students accepted without taking the gaokao.
Central China's Henan Province has the largest number of gaokao sitters, a total of 863,000 this year, an increase of 43,000 compared with 2016, local newspaper the Henan Daily reported.
About 28,000 students from Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region will sit this year's gaokao, more than in any previous year, news site people.cn reported.
The gaokao has long been seen as the most important academic moment in a young person's life, which determines whether they get into college and climb the social ladder, go back to high school for another year to make another attempt, or try to find work in China's fiercely competitive job market.
The hashtag "Go for it, gaokao" has garnered more than 2.03 billion page views on Sina Weibo as of press time.
However the gaokao has faced criticism in recent years and is undergoing a major overhaul.
For instance, at least seven provincial-level regions have announced they have reduced or eliminated the bonus points that were previously offered to ethnic minority students.
According to Beijing's new policy, only ethnic minority candidates who transferred to the capital at the high school stage from officially-designated border, mountain and "ethnic minority residential" areas will enjoy five extra points in the 750-mark gaokao.
Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region will no longer offer 50 extra points to students who received bilingual education, people.cn reported. The report did not say how many extra points these students would now be offered, if any.
East China's Shandong Province has eliminated its five-point bonus for all ethnic minority students, reports said.
Given the large number of students competing in the gaokao, a handful of extra points can make the difference between getting into a top university or a less prestigious institution. As a result, many members of the majority Han ethnicity often complain that policies which seem to favor ethnic minorities constitute "unfair competition."
Meanwhile, an increasing number of regions have announced reforms to make universities take factors other than gaokao scores into account when judging candidates.
For instance, Henan has encouraged taking a candidate's overall quality and high school grades into consideration.
To safeguard fairness, China has criminalized cheating in significant exams since 2015.
According to an amendment to the Criminal Law enacted in November 2015, cheaters can face up to seven years in prison. Cheaters will also be banned from taking any other national examinations for three years.
Six teachers in Northeast China's Liaoning Province were sentenced to prison terms of one year to 26 months for helping students cheat in 2015's gaokao.
This year also marks the 40th anniversary of China reinstating the gaokao since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
The gaokao was first held in 1952 but was suspended for ten years after 1966.
