Physics has become an "abandoned" subject among Chinese middle school students since reform to college entrance examinations allow for students to choose their favored subjects for test.

According to the Zhejiang Provincial Education Examination Authority, only 80,000 chose to take physics exam out of 2,913,000 students in the 2017 college entrance examinations in the eastern Chinese province. Similarly, in Shanghai, only 30 percent of the total number of students selected physics in the first year of the reform.

Beijing is also going to apply the reform this year, and the trend seems spreading. When the school meetings to explain the reform end, parents start to say "not to choose physics".

The new form of college entrance examinations is a plan called "3+3". This includes three mandatory subjects - Chinese, Mathematics and English - and students can choose three more, among Politics, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Technology.

This was designed to alleviate the schoolwork burden on students, and also benefit students’ preferred and best subjects. Compared with other subjects, physics is thought by many students as quite difficult to learn, so abandoning physics could be seen as a realistic choice.

Many educators expressed their concern towards the declining nature of the subject. Hong Wen, vice-president of Yuanpei Education Research Institute, said, "From the country's perspective, the national physics talents may decrease, which will affect the development of industry; From the individual's perspective, lacking a physics knowledge as base, students may face difficulties during the university study if majored in science or technology."

It is widely known that physics is quite important, but some people think they just exaggerated the problem. Chinese netizens said the new exam method is just an updated version rather than completely different, since, although students can choose not to take a subject for the final exam, it does not mean they do not take the course or have tests along the way during their school days.

Similarly, other netizens expressed the opinion that the new mode can efficiently select students who truly love physics and likely become researchers in the future.

A physics teacher also said online, "people should not worry about this, since most science and technology majors have requirements towards physics. And if students choose similar subjects that are relatively simple, the competitive pressure will become bigger. So the trend will change and be stable in the future.”

In fact, the reform is still in its experimental period, and has not been applied nationwide, therefore, there is still time for the 3+3 method to be optimized and truly benefit both students and teachers alike.