70 years after being founded，the People’s Republic of China has attracted worldwide attention for its achievements in education. During this period，the country has issued various high-level policies to maintain education as a public good and protect its public nature against the invasion of marketization. As it continues to steer away from being too exam-oriented，China’s education still faces important challenges such as how to ease the academic burden among primary and middle school students，how to reform the one-size-fits-all type of evaluation for high school admission，and how to deal with bullying among students. Urgent issues also include how to implement the latest policies in early childhood education and how to manage the reform in classifying private education into for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. Innovative solutions need to be developed for these issues while China’s education governance undergoes modernization. The third decade of the 21^stcentury will see China enter a “post-universal-access era”. The article highlights a sense of urgency for reform and calls for forward thinking and vision.