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
- 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
- A Gaokao Zhuangyuan is a student who receives the highest CEE score in
an entire province.
- “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).
- Refer to the appendix for a detailed account of “Milestones in College Entrance
Examination Reforms Since1980.”
- “I” is used in this article when referring to author Yimin Wang.
92 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
- The Chinese proverb used here is “Xian Ku Hou Tian,” literally translated as
“Bitterness comes before sweetness.”
- 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.
- “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).
- Refer to the appendix “Milestones in College Entrance Examination Reforms
Since 1980” for more detailed reform policies.
- 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).
- This is a pseudonym.
- 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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