Four PhD graduates are seen after a graduation ceremony at Tibet University in Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Photo: Xinhua

China's star-studded 2020 Live Graduation event was held on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Saturday night to congratulate Chinese graduates who have been unable to return to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event was co-launched by the People's Daily, the 1905 film channel and social media platform Sina Weibo and comes in the wake of a similar graduation ceremony broadcast on YouTube that saw more than 70 global celebrities including former US president Barack Obama, US singer Beyoncé and South Korean k-pop boy band BTS take part on June 7.

Similarly, the more than five-hour-long livestream also invited many stars such as Chinese action star Jackie Chan, popular Chinese singer Wang Yuan, Singaporean singer JJ Lin and Chinese-American singer Wang Leehom to perform and give commencement speeches.

"This year is an unusual year. You guys have encountered many difficulties to successfully graduate amid the coronavirus. I hope you can improve yourself and become ambitious and responsible young people who contribute to the country and society," Chan said during the livestream. 

By Sunday afternoon, the livestream had earned 36.74 million views on People's Daily's official Sina Weibo account. Many graduates posted messages to the account to express their gratitude for the event. 

"Although the coronavirus prevented me from reuniting with my classmates, the commencement live show was still a memorable and valuable moment for us. Many stars like Zhou Shen, Wang Leehom and JJ Lin have witnessed our growth, so I am so pleased that our idols could accompany us for the celebration," Zhang Jiahui, a postgraduate of the University Of Science & Technology Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

In 2020, the number of China's college graduates reached 8.74 million, of which 88.6 percent took part in online commencement ceremonies, according to reports from the Xinhua News Agency and China Youth Daily. 

Some universities chose a combination of online and offline events for their ceremonies. Xu Yi, a postgraduate of Guangxi Normal University in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, told the Global Times on Sunday that students who want to attend real life ceremonies need to make an appointment online and report their temperature and travel twice a day for two weeks. Those who adhere to these requirements will then have the chance to attend a live event.  

Though the COVID-19 outbreak has deprived most graduates of a traditional commencement, many universities are taking various interesting methods to make the replacement events more entertaining. 

For example, the China University of Geosciences in Beijing sent each student a souvenir ring inlaid with crystal for bachelor's degree graduates, sapphire for master's graduates and a diamond for PhD graduates. 

Photoshopping group photos, watching virtual commencements and recording videos have also been common ways students have been celebrating 2020's special graduation.