Eric's Beijing Diary

Something in the latest ZGBriefs bulletin that caught my eye:

Millions Compete in College Entrance Exam (June 8, 2006, China Daily)

Yesterday was the first day of China's national college entrance exam and a record figure of almost 9 million high school graduates were packed into exam centers around the country. Each one of the 8.8 million students is vying for one of only 2.6 million undergraduate places at the country's universities. Compared to last year the number sitting the exams has grown by 10 percent but the number of available university places has only gone up by 5 percent making competition for places fiercer than ever. In Beijing more than 126,000 students were sitting the exam, said Xian Lianping, vice-director of the city's education committee. He estimated that more than 70 percent of those sitting the exam in Beijing would secure university places thanks to education policies which favored the capital. To ensure students can sit the exam in peace and quiet local governments across China urged construction sites to stop working yesterday and today. Activities like open air Karaoke have been strictly forbidden. High-tech equipment has been deployed in exam rooms nationwide to ensure there's no cheating. Electronic monitoring devices, mobile phone detectors and shielding machines are being widely used. More than 1,600 exam centers in Beijing have been equipped with tele-electric monitoring systems. And supervisors can closely scrutinize exam halls on closed-circuit television networks.

So that means that 5 million plus students are out in the cold? Five million students have no chance at a future? Five million students have to pick up their hoes and head for the fields?

Well, not quite. It really used to be that severe. But China is quite a bit more fluid these days. Still, it is a much more traumatic experience than anything the average American student can imagine. Read Da Chen's book. Generally written for youthful audiences, I would recommend it also for adults who want to understand this problem. But your reading of that book should be tempered a bit with some present realities. Springing up all over China, now, are private colleges and universities designed to accommodate students who may not measure up to the high standards of the national examinations. So students do have other options now. Problem is, these schools (like Beihai) are not cheap. What to do for the students whose parents don't have large sums of money to spend on a private education? In those cases, a lot of it comes down to the ingenuity of the student. I have met several of these types. Some of them are quite successful. Some of them compensate by going into business for themselves. Others become successful by learning English. In China, if your English is good, you will always have some kind of job.

But, in the end, there will still be millions of young people who are "out in the cold," so to speak. All the news about China's wonderful prosperity may sound like a bit of a mockery to these young folks. For all it's economical development, China is not yet the "land of opportunity" for the dispossessed. Still, it is so much more fluid than in the past, and there are more and more people who are able to develop some measure of success, if they have the creativity to come up with a profitable idea, and the determination to work hard to shape that idea into a business opportunity.