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The discourse contained in this confident little speech was repeated

over and over during my research trip. The third quote at the beginning

of this article is representative. Through interviews I learned that this

script was taught and emphasized by teachers. In private conversations

with me, however, the same teachers also asked me for advice regarding

the best available teaching techniques and methods for promoting and

sustaining students’ belief in the opportunities afforded by doing well

on the CEE. As they saw it, high performance on the CEE remained the

only path, narrower though it may be, for insuring opportunity for higher

education and a (still hopefully) improved standard of living for Huining

students and their families.

Two Snapshots from a Time of Change: Stories of Failure

and Success

“Failed” Focus Group Interview: “Successful Ones Will

Always Say It’s Fair, Because It’s So Real to Them!”

During the third week of my 2010 visit, I organized a focus group interview

with four CEE candidates with whom I had had the most extensive

interaction over the past few weeks. By this time, all four students had

sat for the CEE; each had an estimated score but none knew their admission

results. Two were male students and both had repeated their senior

year once. The other two participants were females; one had repeated

her senior year twice, and the other had just taken the CEE for the first

time. Their estimated scores ranged from 430 to 580 out of a possible

750. Within the range represented by this group, the highest scorer had a

possibility of matriculating into a first-tier university. The lowest scoring

student might likely have had no chance in enrolling in any governmentrecognized

college.9

Our interview was conducted in an empty classroom, and I first asked

the participants to share their experiences of CEE preparation. Each student

responded enthusiastically, describing experiences of hard work. The girl

with the estimated score of 430 stated that she really had tried her best,

and even her parents had said she had nothing to be sorry about due to

her hardworking spirit. They would support her continual study if she

was not admitted to college and if she wanted to try another year. I then

cautiously asked the students how they perceived alternative extra point

and principal recommendation admission policies. The low-scoring girl

july–august 2010 87

remained silent, despite my eye contact and attempts to encourage her to

speak first. The boy who had scored the highest among the group picked

up my question, responding, “It doesn’t really affect us. Nobody in our

class, or even in our school, has ever enjoyed those kinds of policies, but

we’re still making it.” Without my asking about issues of low employment

rate and the disadvantages faced by rural students on the job market, he

continued, “This is my second year trying to get into a college, so several

of my peers have already been in college. From them, I learned that I can

network with many people in universities, and also do internships during

the holidays and network with more people in many different areas. So

these people can help you when you look for a job. Rural students need

to change their minds when we get into college and learn from urban

students. . . . So it is not about unfairness—we just need to try in other

ways, on top of studying hard.” The girl who scored in the middle of the

group and who had already attempted the CEE three times flushed as her

peer made this confident speech, which she finally interrupted when he

stated, “It is not about unfairness.” The girl stared at him for a second,

then turned her head to me and said in an emotional but strong voice,

You see, “it is not about unfairness”—you should know that nobody who

succeeded would say it is unfair. You really should know this before you do

this interview—they do experience that is fair, but only because they have

succeeded. Ask yourself, would you say this educational system is unfair?

Do you know what I mean? They have truly experienced the fairness, at

the very moment they stand out . . . other people’s failure has nothing to

do with them . . . the alternative admission policies have taken away many

students’ opportunities for getting into college if you are the ones who are

close to the cutoff score, which is a situation where every score and every

lost opportunity counts. But at the same time, people would say because

your score is not high enough, that’s why you are experiencing this, you

are whining about the national policies, and you are the one who only

complains, but you don’t look for the reasons within yourself.

She then started to cry and ran out of the room. Everybody in the group

fell silent, and I ran after her with no idea how to comfort her.

What was revealed in this truncated focus group interview is that CEE

policies favor a certain group of people, generally those who have already

been advantaged in other areas of social and material life. This group

of people seldom speaks about equity issues associated with the CEE,

because the CEE has been so crucial to their “fate” or the fate of their

children. As my unhappy focus group participant pointed out, the moment

88 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

the successful few succeed and begin to enjoy the potential niceties of

the “elite,” their experiences, at least their “recalled memories” of those

experiences, and the ways they express “inequalities” along the way,

change. Successful students are less likely to voice discontent related

to CEE policies—and inequalities. In contrast, students disadvantaged

by policies and practices are frequently described as working less hard

than others. In turn, they are reluctant to speak up in the way the focus

group participant finally did, because they do not want to damage in

any way their opportunities of getting into the best possible college and

ascending China’s increasingly slippery social ladder. The narratives of

fairness, hard work, fate, and what we might call standpoint justice (in

other words, how can the winners understand the losers) that infuse CEE

equity issues on the ground echo the contradictions that have impeded

major overhaul of the entire CEE and college admission systems.

An Unrecognized Talent: Whose Fault Is It, and Who Is

Asking?

We conclude this article with one final story from 2010. While in Huining,

Yimin Wang met a female CEE candidate named Hui10 who had attempted

to gain admission to college through the avenue of being identified as

artistically talented. Through this avenue, she would have been able to

enjoy the privilege of being admitted to college without taking the CEE.

In pursuit of this dream, Hui quit high school during her last (third) year

and attended precollege training classes that were supposed to produce

talented students and position them to be identified as artistically talented

by university officers responsible for alternative admission.

Hui’s parents ran the only grocery store in the area, and they were

relatively well-off compared with the rest of the community. Hui’s father

was proud of his daughter’s natural talent, and she was often described

as the best singer in the county. He was also touched by his daughter’s

dream of going to the city to perform for a bigger audience, a dream she

could achieve only with specialized training. He and his wife gave their

daughter enough money for a year’s worth of tuition, fees, and room

and board, an amount that represented a majority of the savings of this

middle-aged couple. However, the day I met with Hui was also the day

that she reregistered in the local high school as a repeat student, after

having spent an entire year in the capital city of the province attempting

to gain admission to the university’s special musical talent program, a

july–august 2010 89

goal that turned into a failed adventure. In her own words, Hui described

her experiences as follows:

I think I did well in all the classes and musical performances in the precollege

training class during the year, and I got very good scores on all of the

tests. But on selection day, when the admission officers came to give us

our final tests, my score was only 0.5 points lower than the cutoff score!

. . . I cried the whole day, and most of my peers said this was unfair, but

I don’t know how to trace this unfairness, and I even don’t know how to

describe this unfair experience to you. . . . Many of my fellow students

attended other training sections that were taught by the selection officials

and professors in these special programs.11 I know it is crucial for me to

get into the program, but I don’t have the money to do so. I know the

savings of my parents were only enough for me to attend one school here

in the capital.

Even after such disappointment, Hui has returned to her home county

to begin anew her journey down the academic track that ends with the

CEE, still perceived as the most fair and “accessible” avenue for rural students

seeking college access. Hui’s experience captures how this partially

compromised local belief still retains legitimacy and power in a context

lacking other avenues for improved well-being and social mobility. The

day before I left Huining, after I had completed my scheduled interviews

and school visits, Hui came to the place where I was staying and gave me

an essay titled, “A Singing Bird Confined to the Village.” In the essay, she

explained her failure to gain admission through the alternative admission

route as her lack of social connections and information associated with

her onsite music test. As I read her essay, I heard two voices quarrelling

in the distance. It was an argument between Hui and her father. Hui’s

father thought it was very embarrassing and shameful for Hui to describe

in detail her “failure” to me, an outsider. As they argued, I heard Hui’s

father yell, “You said it is unfair, but whose fault is it? . . . You were the

person who chose the dangerous path of being recognized as musically

talented, but you didn’t know how to do it. . . . It proves that you didn’t

know how to do that!”

“Whose fault is it?” is also a question Hui raised in her essay. In the

face of mounting evidence that urban students are advantaged in college

admissions processes (Chen 2010), the relevance to further research of

social reproduction theories and theories of social and cultural capital

in Chinese society seems apparent. However, scholars have also made

reasonable arguments regarding the lack of “fit” between foundational

90 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

assumptions of critical theory and the social relations and practices—

especially those related to schooling—in “postsocialist” China (Kipnis

forthcoming; Ross, Zhang, and Zhao forthcoming).

However, it is clear that the financially, geographically, and socially

advantaged are being better and better served by China’s educational

system (including its private sector), with numerous examples being

found in the college admissions process. In 2009, for example, the college

admission rate in Shanghai was 84 percent, compared with 55.2 percent

in Gansu (China Ministry of Education 2010). The top two universities

in Shanghai, Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong University, have

implemented a policy of university-based examination that admits up to

one-half of each university’s admission quota. These policies applied

only to students in Shanghai until 2008; since then they have become a

bit more inclusive, including students from the surrounding provinces

of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In addition, many test topics included in these

university-based entrance examinations, such as computer skills, are not

covered in the high school curriculum of some rural schools.

The Ministry of Education has explanations for these explicitly exclusive

policies in relation to university admission. Explanations range from

promoting university autonomy to the rationale that local taxes support

local universities, and therefore locals should have more say about and

derive more benefit from admission procedures. What is most relevant to

the accounts and experiences of teachers and students in rural and poor

areas, especially to those who have failed in the CEE process as a result

of tangible or intangible “exclusiveness” or “unfairness,” is that none of

these “rationales” address Hui’s question of “whose fault” it is.

Summary: The Unfinished Gaokao Puzzle

Huining county, once famous for beating the odds and producing Gaokao

Zhuangyuan, has inspired a learning ethos and discourse, picked up by

nearby urban schools and profit-making tour companies, whose symbolic

Gaokao spirit has been rooted in hard work and persistence. This ethos

and discourse have been partially challenged by the advent of CEE reforms;

their previous foundation of the unquestioned belief in working

hard to change one’s fate through CEE has been shaken. Student and

family experiences of success and failure across the past fifteen years in

Gaokao county tell a story of change and continuity that both explains

the “staying power” of the CEE at the individual-family level as well

july–august 2010 91

as rising levels of concern regarding eroding state-granted fairness in

educational opportunities.

The incentives and opportunities associated with success in the CEE

remain attractive in impoverished rural areas, where people lack other

avenues for improved well-being and social mobility. The CEE also

still remains the best and in many cases only avenue to postsecondary

education for most students. No one in China likes the pressure and

fierce competition that arise as a result of CEE implementation on the

ground or the fact that it only serves well a relatively small percentage

of the population, that is, despite expansion of college opportunities,

the financially, geographically, and socially privileged are increasingly

better served (e.g., Chen 2010; Liu 2010). At the same time, the hope

of “fairness” that has been summarized in practice through the CEE

principle “Everyone is equal in the system of a grade” (Kwong 1983) is

still shared by many people and is reinforced through the state’s national

policy discourse and developmental agenda. This kind of “fairness” also

is seen as preferable to the politicized selection criteria of the chaotic

Mao period, which many parents still vividly recall.

Thus, despite mounting evidence that recent reforms to the CEE and

the increasingly stratified nature of higher education institutions disadvantage

rural students’ chances at social mobility, rural students, parents,

and teachers cling to the (albeit tarnished) meritocratic ideal supporting

the CEE, as well as the exam-centered teaching methods that have been

roundly criticized by national educational reform policies. Their stories

illustrate why the equity-based reform measures outlined in the National

Educational Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020) are so important

and why they will be so difficult to implement.

Notes

1. A Gaokao Zhuangyuan is a student who receives the highest CEE score in

an entire province.

2. “In the year 2000, Gansu province had a population of 25.62 million, 76 percent

of whom resided in rural areas. In 2004, the average rural per capita income was 60

percent of the national average, about 30 percent of that of Beijing, about 25 percent

of that of Shanghai, and about the same as that of Tibet (UNESCAP 2005). According

to UNESCAP (2005), Gansu has the second-highest illiteracy rate in China, with most

illiterates residing in rural areas.” (Hannum and Kong 2007: 6).

3. Refer to the appendix for a detailed account of “Milestones in College Entrance

Examination Reforms Since1980.”

4. “I” is used in this article when referring to author Yimin Wang.

92 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

5. The Chinese proverb used here is “Xian Ku Hou Tian,” literally translated as

“Bitterness comes before sweetness.”

6. In truth, data about how many “high officials” actually come from Huining are

difficult to obtain; in a conversation between Premiere Wen Jiabao and representatives

of Gansu, Wen mentioned that his secretary was from Huining (Yuan 2005),

a story widely circulated in the area.

7. “Xin Gao San Sheng,” “fresh senior three student,” is a term in Huining used in

the context of the unusually large number of fu du sheng (repeating students).

8. Refer to the appendix “Milestones in College Entrance Examination Reforms

Since 1980” for more detailed reform policies.

9. A full CEE score is 750, and the cutoff scores for the first-tier university in

Gansu in the year 2010 were 511 (social science and humanities track) and 531

(natural science track); the cutoff scores for second-tier colleges were 467 (social

science and humanities track) and 481 (natural science track).

10. This is a pseudonym.
11. In fact, Hui was trying to express that her rich classmates ingratiated themselves

to key “gatekeepers” by attending special classes with them.

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