China will hold a college entrance examination on January 19-21 next year as part of the Ministry of Education's attempt to increase college enrollment.

This will mark an epoch-making change in the history of the country's national college entrance examination system.

China has always held the national college entrance examination on July 7-9, and those who failed July's exam had to wait until the following July to take it again.

As a result of the January exam, thirteen colleges and universities in Beijing will enroll a total of 4,000 students, with 1,755 of them from Beijing and more than 2,200 from Anhui Province in east China, Xinhua was told by the Ministry of Education.

The January examination will be on a par with the one in July.