Mainland wages hi-tech war in bid to foil examination cheats

Mainland education authorities are using hi-tech gadgets in a cat-and-mouse game of cracking down on pervasive cheating in the National College Entrance Exam, which started yesterday across the country.

Invigilators in Beijing called in a wireless squad yesterday for the first time to check for all abnormal radio waves around the test centres.

In Shaanxi province in the northwest, students were ordered to file through a metal detector before the test check-in. Invigilators were looking for small devices that might look like soya beans, wristwatches or wallets but were actually wireless receivers.

Luo Ping, an English teacher at the No2 Senior Middle School in Huaibin county, Henan , said: 'We have radio signal blockers installed around all the test centres in the county, although test cheats are not so popular here.'

On the mainland, a university diploma means not only a much higher salary, residency in big cities, and a reliable social security arrangement, but an opening for squeezing into the ranks of public servants and vying for a post in the government - an enviable social badge of true career success.

Every year during the exam season, injustice related to the entrance exams makes headlines, and the government promises to use an iron fist against irregularities, ranging from nepotistic favours to testing-centre cheats.