[Big read] Inside China’s arts exam shadow market

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

With another gaokao season underway, 50-year-old Liu Xiao is pulled back to the year her family spent nearly 7 million RMB (US$1.04 million) chasing a place for her daughter in China’s cut-throat arts admissions system. In the end, she earned a place at a top arts institution — but not in her first-choice acting programme. She was instead assigned to a lesser-regarded folk art major, learning puppetry instead of performing in the spotlight.

Liu told Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) that this programme was essentially a “fallback” for students who failed to enter acting, musical theatre, film or television.

Inside China’s high-stakes yikao system

China’s yikao (arts college entrance examination) combines provincial-level unified exams with university-specific auditions. It covers disciplines such as fine arts, dance, music, acting and directing, and broadcasting.

Most applicants can enter arts universities using provincial exam scores alone, but the fiercest competition is reserved for a small group of elite schools that run their own independent admissions tests.

These include top institutions such as the Central Academy of Drama, Beijing Film Academy and Shanghai Theatre Academy. As of 2026, only 34 Chinese universities still maintain such independent exams for selected arts majors.

In the case of the Central Academy of Drama’s acting department, industry estimates suggest more than 10,000 applicants compete each year for just a few dozen places.

Talent helps — but money opens doors

Liu was blunt about what it takes to succeed: talent is essential, but so is “a strong family background”.

That pressure has fuelled a booming yikao training industry. According to estimates from organisations including chyxxx.com (智研咨询), the market was worth between 43.29 billion RMB and 70 billion RMB last year.

But long preparation cycles, intense competition, and parents willing to spare no expense or effort in helping their children navigate this fiercely contested pathway have also created grey zones at every stage — from coaching centres to admissions — providing fertile ground for rule-bending practices.

At Liu’s daughter’s yikao training institution, a graduate of her daughter’s target university had acted as a “middleman”, managing gift-giving arrangements on behalf of parents.

Through this intermediary, Liu sent dozens of red packets containing 10,000 RMB in cash each to professors who might be involved in assessing applicants during the independent admissions examinations.

The middleman, she said, understood each professor’s “preferences”. Some preferred cigars or alcohol; others favoured jade, calligraphy, paintings — or cash. Gifts were delivered under the guise of “visiting teachers”.

“The professors were very cautious too. Some even rented flats specifically to store the gifts,” she said.

Beyond gifts, Liu also paid for private lessons with professors from her preferred institution. Some of these instructors have since come under investigation for disciplinary violations.

Each lesson costs 20,000 RMB per hour, with at least ten sessions required. The goal, she said, was not skill-building but recognition. That way, when the independent admissions examinations took place, professors could recognise candidates from memory even though they were identified only by examination numbers rather than names, and would be inclined to give them more favourable marks.

Liu revealed that the most influential professors rarely taught these classes themselves. Their students often did. “That’s why you had to keep signing up,” Liu said. “So there were more chances to be seen.”

In total, she spent more than 1 million RMB on such classes for her daughter alone.

Admission — with conditions attached

Even after passing the independent exams and meeting gaokao thresholds, Liu’s daughter still fell short of admission into the acting major, the middleman told her.

The best remaining option was a less competitive programme. But even those places were scarce, and accepting one would require a further “balance payment”.

In the end, her daughter agreed to the arrangement. After transferring the final amount, the admission letter arrived.

“When I received it, I said it was more precious than a diamond,” she recalled.

Her daughter’s case, however, is far from unique. As a crucial gateway into China’s arts universities, the independent admissions examination has long been a breeding ground for opaque practices and behind-the-scenes manipulation.

A system where subjectivity creates opportunity

Zhou Na, a research fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, told LHZB that arts admissions are defined by one key feature: subjectivity.

Unlike standard academic exams, which rely on fixed scores, arts assessments depend heavily on evaluators’ personal judgment — giving examiners wide discretion.

Although reforms such as anonymous marking, separation of teaching and assessment, and video-recorded evaluations have been introduced in recent years, Zhou said they still cannot fully remove human subjectivity.

Meanwhile, the potentially high returns in the arts industry — particularly in film and television — mean that more people are willing to invest heavily and compete through resources and personal connections.

Over the past 20 years, China’s entertainment industry has undergone rapid capitalisation. The rise of celebrity influencers driven by traffic, exorbitant appearance fees, and the boom in variety shows and micro-dramas have all made the sector highly alluring. 

Zhou said that yikao has shifted from being an educational competition into a high-risk, high-reward “investment”.

Rampant corruption in elite institutions

The scope for rent-seeking within the examinations and admissions process has also become fertile ground for corruption.

In recent years, cases involving corruption among cadres and professors at arts colleges have repeatedly come to light.

Last December, Hao Rong, former deputy party secretary and president of the Central Academy of Drama, surrendered to authorities over serious violations of Party discipline and law. Less than two months later, former acting department heads Chen Gang and Wang Xin, both former heads of the academy’s acting department, also turned themselves in.

According to incomplete statistics, since the downfall of the three aforementioned individuals, at least six faculty members from the departments of acting, stage design and directing at the Central Academy of Drama have either been removed from official listings or stripped of supervisory roles.

Other leading institutions have also faced similar scandals. In October last year, former Beijing Film Academy vice president Ni Yuehong was investigated for serious violations of discipline and law after retirement. In 2020, former Communication University of China vice president Cai Xiang was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for corruption.

Although official statements have not disclosed in detail the specific reasons behind the downfall of these arts school academics, an inspection report by the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee in August 2025 also flagged “significant loopholes in admissions confidentiality” at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, which later pledged stricter measures to ensure admissions are conducted in a fair, just and transparent manner and a “clean admissions environment.”

Meanwhile, anti-corruption investigations have continued across other institutions. Since 2023, Xie Jianming, former vice president of the Nanjing University of the Arts; Song Xiewei, former dean of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, along with former vice dean Zhang Xinrong; and Dong Qinxue, former party secretary of the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, have all fallen from grace. Chang Ping, former vice chair of the Composition Department at the Central Conservatory of Music, voluntarily surrendered to authorities last October.

Clique culture runs deep

The interest chain in the yikao system stretches from training to final admissions because the coaching ecosystem is quietly intertwined with universities’ assessment and selection processes.

Some professors simultaneously hold academic posts while also participating in private training, industry projects, and even maintaining links with talent agencies. This creates informal pipelines between external training networks and internal admissions processes.

A senior executive at an yikao training institution told LHZB that after graduating from a top arts school, he helped register his mentor as a nominal general manager of an yikao training company. The arrangement enabled lecturers to be hired as consultants, creating a channel through which more than 1 million RMB in parental “facilitation payments” could be funnelled back to his mentor in instalments disguised as consultancy fees.

Over time, some professors built stable mentor-mentee networks around themselves, with their interests becoming intertwined with those of arts training institutions, film and media companies, and stage design firms. After entering the industry, former students often channel substantial sums back to their mentors through visits, sponsorship of stage productions, donations and so on.

Tang Renwu, a professor at the Academy of Government at Beijing Normal University, said in an interview that such mentor relationships in the arts are unusually strong. Under the recommendation and introduction of well-known mentors, students are often able to secure better employment opportunities and industry resources, making clique culture especially entrenched.

The structural problem behind arts education

Beyond cliqueish mentor-mentee networks and the lack of objective evaluation standards, another reason corruption takes root in arts institutions lies in their duality: they are not only schools — they are gateways into the entertainment industry. They control access to key resources and relationship networks within the film, media and acting sectors, making corruption more likely to evolve into a systemic structural problem.

Zhou argued that current reforms show that regulators are aware of the seriousness of the problem. However, they are largely technical fixes that do not address the core structure.

“As long as a professor can both decide admissions and run training courses, manage a studio or connect students to industry resources, benefit transfers will continue,” she said.

Tang added that universities remain a key focus of anti-corruption campaigns by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, with the independent admissions process at arts institutions receiving particular scrutiny. As the authorities step up regulation and rectification of the yikao system, opportunities for rent-seeking have indeed diminished.

Even so, “for every measure, there is a countermeasure” — there will always be people looking to exploit loopholes and devise new ways to circumvent anti-corruption oversight.

Why a crackdown is not that simple

Interviewed academics also warned that tackling corruption in arts education is not that straightforward.

Zhou explained that arts schools in cities like Beijing and Shanghai carry cultural and political significance, making inaction impossible. Anti-corruption efforts have therefore continued in recent years. Yet, the yikao industry has also developed into a vast economic ecosystem. Many local governments see the cultural sector, the performing arts economy, and film and television production bases as growth engines.

A strict crackdown could disrupt jobs and entrenched capital networks.

Some arts institutions also rely on revenue from independent exams and training partnerships. Zhou noted that, as many arts colleges face financial pressures, independent admissions and training collaborations have become important revenue streams. “To some extent, these grey areas help bridge the gap between institutional needs and funding constraints,” she explained.

As a result, such problems have long been caught in a cycle of “regulation, backlash, and renewed regulation”.

Zhou was blunt: the yikao system reflects a broader pattern in some parts of China’s economy — concentrated resources, opaque evaluations, and outsized financial returns. When oversight is largely internal, corruption can easily become entrenched. In her view, yikao is not an outlier, but one of the clearest and most extreme expressions of this dynamic. 

Scarred by the industry’s unspoken rules

Beyond the financial costs, some yikao candidates may also fall victim to unspoken rules and abuses of power on their path to higher education, paying a physical and psychological price that is impossible to quantify.

Xiaojing (pseudonym), 20, now studying at a private institution in Singapore, still shudders when recalling the year and a half he spent in Beijing yikao training.

One male instructor, he told LHZB, frequently posted photos of himself attending theatre performances and social gatherings with teachers from prestigious universities. He claimed to know numerous celebrities and to have close personal ties with university admissions staff. “In our eyes, he was king. He lived the kind of life we all aspired to,” he said.

The male instructor frequently invited male students out for drinks and tried to build “close rapport” with them. On one occasion, he allegedly cornered Xiaojing and made an indecent advance while intoxicated.

“My mind went blank. I was completely stunned,” he said.

He also heard numerous similar accounts involving female students. “You don’t even know how it starts,” he said. “We were taught to obey. We were told things like this would happen anyway if you entered an arts university.”

His experience echoes broader allegations. In September 2022, an article titled “The Tearful Testimonies of 21 Fang Siqi-like Victims in the Yikao Circle: The Case of Du Yingzhe of Yinglu” went viral online. In it, 21 female students accused Du Yingzhe, founder of the well-known yikao training institution Yinglu Zhantai (影路站台), of committing acts of sexual harassment and sexual assault during the course of his teaching. One 17-year-old was allegedly groomed, became pregnant, and gave birth to his child.

Du was detained the same month the allegations came to light. On 23 April this year, his case was heard at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court. According to Jimu News, prosecutors recommended life imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for life. The court said a verdict would be delivered at a later date.

A month after the Du Yingzhe case was exposed, China’s Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Security, and State Administration for Market Regulation launched a joint special enforcement campaign targeting yikao training institutions, including comprehensive field inspections and the creation of detailed institutional records, verification of staff qualifications, and a crackdown on illegal and criminal offences such as sexual assault.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “艺考生意经层层流转 灰色产业链环环相扣”.

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