Last year, China’s Ministry of Education announced the “Smart Education of China” initiative, a network of three integrated online education platforms centralizing China’s online course offering. The three platforms are respectively geared toward:

• higher education
• K–12 education
• vocational education

The initiative aimed to leverage technology to narrow educational gaps across China. It represented “a notable milestone in the nation’s education digitalization strategy,” as stated at the time China’s Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng.

A year later, let’s see how these platforms are doing.

Higher Education Platform: Chinaooc

Chinaooc is an integrated platform for higher education in China. It catalogs over 20K online courses made by universities and offered through various Chinese MOOC platforms. So it’s a course aggregator for China, much like Class Central is a course aggregator for online education at large.

You can directly find a course through the search bar or filter courses by platform, university, subject, or topic. The Learn Now button will take you to the course page on the original provider’s website, where you’ll be able to take the course.

K–12 Platform: Basic Smartedu

The platform Basic Smartedu includes a wide range of educational resources for K–12 students. But these are not not limited to the academic subjects usually taught in primary and secondary schools. For example, students can also learn about mental health, Chinese traditional culture, and law on the platform. It also offers learning materials that go beyond the classroom context, like physical exercise, readings, and movies.

Vocational Education Platform: Vocational Smartedu

The platform Vocational Smartedu aggregates online learning resources for vocational training and career development. Courses are categorized into primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the economy, covering topics like mining, manufacturing, and entertainment, for instance.