For non-attending students, the exam is written only and consists of a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions on the course content: ten closed questions (each with three answer choices, only one of which is correct) and three open-ended questions. The exam is to be completed in a maximum time of two hours. The open questions may be worth up to a maximum of 5/30; of the closed questions, four are worth 1/30, the remaining six are worth 2/30. Questions not answered or answered incorrectly are worth 0.
In the open questions, the ability is assessed:
- To organize one's argument clearly and precisely;
- to refer correctly to the texts studied, correctly employing the specialized vocabulary learned;
- to correctly cite place and person names, dates and concepts in Chinese relevant to the topics covered;
- to answer questions (which are always "legitimate questions," thus lacking an unambiguously certain and a priori established answer) critically, developing the analysis of the topic and the argumentation of one's thesis in an original way.

Attending students will be subject to several forms of assessment in progress.
First, they will be able to participate in two group presentations/debates.
The first ("Debate of the Hundred Schools") will take the form of a role-playing game set in the era of the Warring States, in which students are invited to immerse themselves in the reality of a lordly court of the time, dividing themselves into different schools of thought to which the teacher/feudal lord submits a domestic policy problem and a foreign policy problem (both drawn from the historiographical literature on the period).
The second group work ("Debate Saving China") is concerned with the development of papers (argued later in further public debate) from the perspectives of the different political factions (Confucian reformists, Republican revolutionaries, New Culture Movement activists, nationalists, communists) who debated the need to reform China's culture and institutions between the 19th and 20th centuries, from historical documents and monographs by sinologists, historians and other scholars.

Attending students will have access to two written partial exams (the first consists of three open questions, the second of six closed multiple-choice questions), each of which can be worth a maximum of 10/30 before the final exam, which will be oral. Objectives and criteria for the evaluation of these partial exams are similar to those already described for the written exam intended for nonattenders. The first partial will be offered after the first four thematic units, the second partial at the conclusion of the eighth thematic unit. Those who took the partials will be able to limit the final exam to an oral test to complete the two partials taken during the semester. The final grade will therefore take into account the marks obtained in the partial tests (each test is worth 10/30) which will be on the monograph texts chosen by the students from those proposed. Each of these three tests (the two partials plus the oral) must score a minimum of 6/10 to be passed. The first two tests may be repeated only once, failing which students will be referred to the written exam for non-attenders. The points obtained in the group activities offered during the course (expressed in thirtieths), will be added to those obtained in the first two written tests. In the final exam, the final grade will result from the sum of the score thus obtained with the evaluation of the oral test (provided that the latter has been passed, otherwise students may repeat the oral test at the next appeal).Evaluation of the oral test (provided that the latter has been passed, otherwise students may repeat the oral test at the next appeal).