China’s education system is a vast, state-directed enterprise built around nine years of compulsory schooling and a fiercely competitive pathway into higher education. Since 1949, the country has pushed literacy campaigns, rebuilt schools after the Cultural Revolution, and tied education tightly to economic modernization. Exam systems such as the Zhongkao and Gaokao steer student futures, while elite “key” schools and Double First Class universities concentrate resources and prestige. Enrolment and attainment have soared, but so have inequalities between urban and rural areas and between rich and poor. Recent reforms under Xi Jinping pair modest efforts to ease student pressure with far stronger ideological control over what and how children learn.