BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhuanet) -- China's annual college entrance exams, which will have more than eight million exam-takers this year, will witness a nationwide campaign against hi-tech cheating,said Lin Huiqing, a senior official with the Ministry of Education(MOE) here on Monday.

    The exams are scheduled to begin on Tuesday and end on June 10 this year.

    Passing the college entrance exams is the only way for the Chinese youth to gain access to higher education. This year, a total of 8.67 million people have registered for the exams, but only one in every four test-takers will eventually be eligible for university enrollment.

    "The high pressure of the exams, in addition with the rapid development of the telecommunications industry, has boosted hi-tech cheating in recent years," said an MOE official who refused to give his name.

    According to the official, during last year's exams, a total of 134 students were punished for violating exam rules in east China's Anhui Province alone. Among them, 69 were involved in cheating through the use of cell phones.

    Such activities have evoked strong resentment not only among the exam-takers, but also their parents.

    The father of Chen Su, a high-school student in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, who had registered for this year's exams, said that cheating on the college entrance exams is something "unfair to those honest students" and will "hurt the country's education system and poison social atmosphere."

    Responding to the parents' concerns, MOE Spokesman Wang Xuming said on Monday that China's education administrations have tightened control on test discipline in recent years and that the efforts are paying off.

    In 2004, 3,100 students across the country received punishment for violating test discipline -- the lowest figure since 1995. Some 110 people working as the exam staff were also punished for helping the cheaters, with 11 of them sentenced to imprisonment.

    Wang said that this year education administrations at all levels will place more focus on combating hi-tech cheating. In Yingkou City of northeast China's Liaoning Province, machines that cost some 400,000 yuan (48,400 US dollars) were installed in the examination rooms to shield off any telecommunication signals. In east China's Shandong Province, all examination rooms were equipped with an electronic monitor.

    The spokesman stressed that the MOE would also dispatch special teams to make tour inspections nationwide during this year's exams.Telecommunications administrations at all levels will also "help block" mobile phone short text messages relevant to the exams.

    According to Wang, from this year on, the credibility record of college entrance exam takers in China will be taken as an evaluation index by universities and colleges in students enrollment. The credibility records of the test-takers will be stored in a nationwide data bank and submitted to colleges and universities as reference.

    In the same practice first introduced last year, all those taking this year's college entrance exams will be required to signa paper promising not to cheat in the exams, he added. Enditem