On October 21, 1977, the decision to restore the national university entrance examination was announced in China, and the examination, which had been suspended since 1966, was brought back for students to be chosen by test rather than by recommendation. The announcement was made through the press, and the decision had been settled at a national meeting on college enrolment that opened in August and ran into September. The change was one of the first big reversals of the Cultural Revolution period. The change was quick.
Universities had been closed or disrupted in the late 1960s, and from 1970 places had been offered to workers, peasants and soldiers who were recommended by their work units rather than tested. The result was a sharp fall in standards and in the numbers of trained specialists. After 1976, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the argument for a return to examinations was pressed by Deng Xiaoping, who had been restored to office, and the enrolment meeting accepted it. The door reopened.
The first examination under the new rules was held in December 1977, and it was taken by about 5.7 million people, of whom some 270,000 were admitted in 1978, and the examination was set and marked by the provinces. Candidates were of very different ages because a decade of students had been held back, and many of those who took it had been sent to the countryside earlier as youth. The intake included a large share of older students.
The examination was made national and held each year from 1979, and it became the main route into higher education and one of the most important events in the life of a Chinese family. The stakes were high. The date and the details have changed many times since, but the principle that places should be won by examination is the part of the system that was settled in 1977.