# CMMMU: A Chinese Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmark

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11944 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11944/

## Key facts

- Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in MLLM training and visual instruction tuning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 31 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [MLLM training and visual instruction tuning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/mllm-training-and-visual-instruction-tuning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14238/) (2023)
- [VQA: Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00468/) (2015)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16502/) (2023)
- [Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09513/) (2022)
- [MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13394/) (2023)
- [MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02255/) (2023)
- [Flickr30k Entities: Collecting Region-to-Phrase Correspondences for Richer Image-to-Sentence Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04870/) (2015)
- [Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06070/) (2023)
- [MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02490/) (2023)
- [OK-VQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Requiring External Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00067/) (2019)
- [GLM: General Language Model Pretraining with Autoregressive Blank Infilling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10360/) (2021)
- [SEED-Bench: Benchmarking Multimodal LLMs with Generative Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16125/) (2023)
- [VizWiz Grand Challenge: Answering Visual Questions from Blind People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08218/) (2018)
- [AGIEval: A Human-Centric Benchmark for Evaluating Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06364/) (2023)
- [A-OKVQA: A Benchmark for Visual Question Answering using World Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01718/) (2022)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13290/) (2021)
- [DeepSeek LLM: Scaling Open-Source Language Models with Longtermism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02954/) (2024)
- [mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04257/) (2023)
- [Generative Multimodal Models are In-Context Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13286/) (2023)
- [Efficient and Effective Text Encoding for Chinese LLaMA and Alpaca](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08177/) (2023)
- [Evaluating the Performance of Large Language Models on GAOKAO Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12474/) (2023)
- [UniIR: Training and Benchmarking Universal Multimodal Information Retrievers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17136/) (2023)
- [Large Multilingual Models Pivot Zero-Shot Multimodal Learning across Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12038/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [DeepSeek-VL: Towards Real-World Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05525/) (2024)
- [InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02691/) (2024)
- [VLMEvalKit: An Open-Source Toolkit for Evaluating Large Multi-Modality Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11691/) (2024)
- [LMMs-Eval: Reality Check on the Evaluation of Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12772/) (2024)
- [OCRBench v2: An Improved Benchmark for Evaluating Large Multimodal Models on Visual Text Localization and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00321/) (2024)
- [SPHINX-X: Scaling Data and Parameters for a Family of Multi-modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05935/) (2024)
- [OmniBench: Towards The Future of Universal Omni-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15272/) (2024)
- [Natural Language Understanding and Inference with MLLM in Visual Question Answering: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17558/) (2024)
- [MME-Survey: A Comprehensive Survey on Evaluation of Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15296/) (2024)
- [OlympicArena: Benchmarking Multi-discipline Cognitive Reasoning for Superintelligent AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12753/) (2024)
- [SimpleVQA: Multimodal Factuality Evaluation for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13059/) (2025)
- [CARES: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Trustworthiness in Medical Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06007/) (2024)
- [OmniCorpus: A Unified Multimodal Corpus of 10 Billion-Level Images Interleaved with Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08418/) (2024)
- [Advancing Multimodal Reasoning: From Optimized Cold Start to Staged Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04207/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Evaluation of Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15769/) (2024)
- [Reinforced MLLM: A Survey on RL-Based Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21277/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08748/) (2025)
- [Position: Multimodal Large Language Models Can Significantly Advance Scientific Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02871/) (2025)
- [ICONS: Influence Consensus for Vision-Language Data Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00654/) (2024)
- [MM-IQ: Benchmarking Human-Like Abstraction and Reasoning in Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00698/) (2025)
- [M5 -- A Diverse Benchmark to Assess the Performance of Large Multimodal Models Across Multilingual and Multicultural Vision-Language Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03791/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Benchmarks: In the Era of Large AI Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18142/) (2024)
- [Next Token Prediction Towards Multimodal Intelligence: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18619/) (2024)
- [Training on the Benchmark Is Not All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01790/) (2024)
- [Lumen: Unleashing Versatile Vision-Centric Capabilities of Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07304/) (2024)
- [VRBench: A Benchmark for Multi-Step Reasoning in Long Narrative Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10857/) (2025)
- [MMEvalPro: Calibrating Multimodal Benchmarks Towards Trustworthy and Efficient Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00468/) (2024)
- [HSSBench: Benchmarking Humanities and Social Sciences Ability for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03922/) (2025)
- [CMMaTH: A Chinese Multi-modal Math Skill Evaluation Benchmark for Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12023/) (2024)
- [Multi-label Cluster Discrimination for Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17331/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As the capabilities of large multimodal models (LMMs) continue to advance, evaluating the performance of LMMs emerges as an increasing need. Additionally, there is an even larger gap in evaluating the advanced knowledge and reasoning abilities of LMMs in non-English contexts such as Chinese. We introduce CMMMU, a new Chinese Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding benchmark designed to evaluate LMMs on tasks demanding college-level subject knowledge and deliberate reasoning in a Chinese context. CMMMU is inspired by and strictly follows the annotation and analysis pattern of MMMU. CMMMU includes 12k manually collected multimodal questions from college exams, quizzes, and textbooks, covering six core disciplines: Art & Design, Business, Science, Health & Medicine, Humanities & Social Science, and Tech & Engineering, like its companion, MMMU. These questions span 30 subjects and comprise 39 highly heterogeneous image types, such as charts, diagrams, maps, tables, music sheets, and chemical structures. CMMMU focuses on complex perception and reasoning with domain-specific knowledge in the Chinese context. We evaluate 11 open-source LLMs and one proprietary GPT-4V(ision). Even GPT-4V only achieves accuracies of 42%, indicating a large space for improvement. CMMMU will boost the community to build the next-generation LMMs towards expert artificial intelligence and promote the democratization of LMMs by providing diverse language contexts.