China orders halt to history checks for college kids seeking credits for US college courses

On Thursday, Beijing ordered a suspension of history tests run with the aid of a US non-profit business enterprise for college students seeking credit at American schools because the ruling Communist Party cracks down on academic material it deems unfriendly.

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The suspension of Advanced Placement (AP) assessments will hit secondary faculty college students looking to ease the academic workload at US universities using income credits for some college publications, allowing them to graduate faster.

Five looks centers across Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai confirmed they would suspend the exams by using 2020 after a directive from China’s Ministry of Education.

“This is a piece surprising; we don’t understand the purpose,” a Nanjing-based totally center, SAT Test Web, said on the social media platform WeChat. “If you observe for any of these four subjects, it manner you want to visit other assessments outdoor on the mainland.”

The tests affected had been in US history, global history, European history, and human geography, said the International Exchange and Cooperation Centre in Educational Measurement (IECC), a Chinese frame authorized to administer the tests.

The ministry did now not respond to a request for remark.

Officials at the AP test centers declined to mention the ban’s reason but stated they might follow it to avoid punitive measures.

However, the centers stated that advanced courses and assessments in technological know-how, mathematics, and different subjects had been unaffected.

The College Board, a non-earnings organization primarily based in New York that works with the IEEC and receives prices for providing the exams globally, declined to remark directly on the suspensions or the numbers of college students taking AP records tests in China.

A spokesman for the board stated it had in no way moved to disclaim college students’ right to entry to AP tests, which, outdoors the US, had been “fantastically uncommon and depending on the willingness and ability of a college to manage the instructions.”

It is now not without delay what proportion the affected assessments represent of these taken in China.

The suspensions come as Beijing ramps up efforts to delete instructional history content material that isn’t always approved by using the Chinese Communist Party.

Negative interpretations of subjects like the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Sino-Japanese conflict, and the South China Sea are strictly censored in China. Cyber laws make it a crook offense to proportion non-sanctioned records online.

In September, the ministry inspected school textbooks to remove unapproved content and refocus training on communist ideology and records.
This month, it warned college students and lecturers
about the dangers of analyzing within the United States, pointing to visa restrictions.

The move also comes amid rising US-China acrimony as US President Donald Trump’s administration takes a tougher line on immigration. Chinese college students have become a focus of anxiety among the sector’s largest economies.

China is America’s biggest unmarried supply of international students, with the Institute of International Education placing their numbers at 363,000 within the 2017-18 academic 12 months.