What Makes the Gaokao Unfair?

By Yukun / Winter 2020

Gaokao is a series of exams that students in China have to take in order to get into universities in China. Gaokao usually happens on June 7th of every year, and it tests on nine subjects: Chinese, math, English, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history, politics. Students have to spend nine years in compulsory education (elementary school and middle school) and three years in high school in order to qualify for taking Gaokao. Students put their twelve years of effort into preparing Gaokao, the exams that take two-three days; most of them are usually extremely stressed out because scores on Gaokao is required way to show their ability to the universities they want to go to. While not only students work hard and are mentally stressful for Gaokao, but also people such as schools and teachers whose ranking depends on their students’ scores and offers, parents who care about their kids’ future education, police and medical teams who are responsible for the security and safety of the examination area, districts who make and manage Gaokao exam questions and grading, and so on.

Each year, the districts will set Fen Shu Xian, three sets of scores that divide students into three different levels of universities, with considering universities’ admission plans and the population in regions. Yi Ben Xian is the highest Fen Shu Xian (line standard) to define students who can be admitted to the first level universities because first level universities usually only admit students who have scores higher than Yi Ben Xian. Students who get really high scores that much higher than Yi Ben Xian would get into 211/985 universities (top ranking schools), those were focused developed with agendas and policies for decades and tend to receive more funds and investments from the district/government and communities/institutions. And there are also Er Ben Xian and San Ben Xian that set scores standard for the second level and third level universities that would usually have much fewer educating resources including talents and facilities because these schools receive fewer funds and investments compare to those well-known top schools. For example, according to the data in 2013, Tsinghua University, the school that has most research funds among 211/985 universities, which has 3.931 billion RMB of research funds while 2.775 billion RMB from governmental funds; Southwest Petroleum University, the school that has most research funds among non-211/985 universities, which has 460 million RMB of research funds while 120 million RMB from governmental funds.

In this case, Tsinghua University as a 211/985 university has much more funds and able to gather much more resources than Southwest Petroleum University as a non- 211/985 university. The difference between research funding at Tsinghua University and Southwest Petroleum University can explain why people who care about higher education really want to get into those 211/985 top schools is because the schools that have more funds are most of the time have much higher quantity and quality of educational resources including talents (famous scholars, instructors, etc.) and facilities.

Gaokao is supposed to be set for everyone to have a similar possibility to get into top universities and get access to education with high quality. Exam integrity and fair grading of Gaokao have been highly standardized and regulated, which looks like everyone can fairly compete with each other base on their own abilities. However, the unequal education resources that people from different classes and regions have let the students have different advantages and disadvantages to Gaokao, which are usually set since they were born. Students individually fight against the disadvantages caused by regional and class differences would be extremely hard, since the unavailability of high- quality resources before Gaokao would just make getting high scores on Gaokao and admitting by the top universities become much more difficult for students who have fewer resources than others who have more resources, which is the unfair contradiction behind the Gaokao-focused education system in China.

Regional Difference

Hukou is the household identity book that determines where a person is from. On Hukou, the region where a person comes from is defined according to where the senior generation of that person’s father came from. Therefore, even if a family has settled in a region for decades, they usually are not able to move their Hukou to the region they want. Hukou matters a lot in China because many national policies would benefit some specific regions especially municipality cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shanghai, which each city has the same status as a province politically), the capital of each province, and some other government-focused developed cities. The different levels of government distribution into different regions build a regional hierarchy because of the unequal development in different regions caused by unequal supporting resources. In the regional hierarchy, municipality cities are more privileged than the province’s capitals that are more privileged than large cities which are more privileged than small cities/towns, while the rural villages are located at the bottom of the regional hierarchy.

Hukou can cause unfairness for Gaokao because district rules usually only allow students to take exams in the province that their Hukou printed. Also, depending on the political division/management and universities’ admission plans, exam questions and score standards are not exactly the same for every province/region every year. Therefore, provinces or regions that have higher Yi Ben Xian (“清华北大 2019 官方 录取数据公布!各省录取分数对照表一览”) does not necessarily mean it has that high quality of students or high competition, it just a scoreline that the universities and the government set in order to only get a certain percentage of students from that specific area to be admitted.

Some provinces, especially those with fewer good universities but huge populations, would have extreme competition and much harder questions on the exams. Henan, the province my roommate comes from, is probably the province that has the highest competition. Each year, Henan has the most population join Gaokao, around one million students, which is the main reason why the percentage of Henan exam- takers can be categorized as Yi Ben are just around 10%. While the capital of China, one of the municipality cities, Beijing has about 5.9k people to take Gaokao, and about 36% of people can be categorized as Yi Ben (“清华北大 2019 官方录取数据公布! 各省录取分数对照表一览”).

From comparing regions that have many good universities with relatively less population such as Beijing, would have relatively less competition because every university will have a friendly admission plan (such as accept relatively lower scores) for local students. Moreover, just the Beijing city itself has twenty-six 211 universities and that is another significant reason why the percentage of people who can be categorized as Yi Ben is the highest. Henan, on the other hand, has only one 211 universities. Even though the 211 university in Henan, Zhengzhou University, set an admission plan for around 10k local students every year, the plan is still not enough to relieve the extreme competition in Henan. Since universities have much more friendly admission for local students, it’s even harder for students from regions with fewer good schools to be admitted by a good school, since it’s also much harder to get into a school in a different province, except the students come from municipality cities who would get policies benefits no matter what.

Even in the same province, people from different areas also have different privileges for educating opportunities because the provinces in China are also geographically large so that not every area in a province is able to develop equally. For example, the capital of the province is usually most privileged, while the other focused developed large and industrial cities are more privileged over normal small cities and towns. Top schools become top schools because they are located in capital or large cities, where the local school district has been received focused supports (funds and talents) by the government and its policies. Because of the unequal resource distribution for different areas, the quantity and quality of educational resources in different areas are also different, which make it harder for students from less privileged small cities to be competitive than students from more privileged large cities, even the exam questions and score line are the same within the province.

Nowadays, the central government has softened the rules that make students have to take the exams in the regions that their Hukou lists so that some students can choose to take Gaokao in the regions they settled in. However, the changed rules do not mean students can take Gaokao at wherever they want because they would have to become cases that are decided by specific local districts “as appropriate”, which also means the possibility of students to choose where they want to take exams in is still really low, and usually only contributable elites’ kids are allowed to do that. Some governmental effort seems to help reducing inconvenience and inequality, in the end, it’s not that effective and just received many complaints and judgments. For example, many students and parents from Shanghai feel they are facing higher and higher educational competition and difficulty because there are many settlers from other regions settled in Shanghai and their kids will become local students’ new competitors. But in reality, only certain settlers such as whose parents are local Shanghai people or governor in Shanghai are eligible to take Gaokao in Shanghai and compete with the local Shanghai students. Moreover, when students from municipality cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shanghai) apply to top schools in other provinces, they will also fall into other categories of more friendly admission. Therefore, even competition for many people from those focused developed cities has increased, but they are still an advantage over many students in nonprivileged regions.

Class Difference

Like in the previous example of some elites’ kids are able to take Gaokao in the regions they can afford to settle in, people from the higher classes in the social hierarchy are usually able to overcome regional inequality because they have the money power to gather more educational resources such as paying to take extra courses for learning the course materials ahead of others and also for having exam preparation courses. While people from lower classes would not have this privilege to change their disadvantaged conditions because those extra courses are usually very expensive (around 200 RMB per hour) for them. Moreover, even just the school expenses are

sometimes too expensive for many people from the lower classes. Without considering living expenses and transportation expenses, just some mandatory expenses to study in a high school are high. For example, tuition fees (around 2,000 RMB per year for public schools and around 20,000 RMB per year for private school), textbook fees (around 2,400 RMB per year), uniform fees (around 3,000 to 7,000 RMB), dining fees (around 10,000 RMB per year), and so on.

People who earn minimum salaries (around 36,000 RMB per year) are not able to let their kids have high quality and expensive private education, but they are still able to afford basic educations for their kids so these kids can be educated and take Gaokao, and then they might able to gain opportunities for higher education. While the families identified as poverty (lower than 4,000 RMB income per year), even they eliminate dining and uniform, are still barely able to support their kids to go to schools. Therefore, there are many kids from lower-class family do not have an opportunity to go to high schools, the three years education required for taking Gaokao but not contained in compulsory education that the government supports everyone to have. Since people from poverty usually do not have enough credits to borrow money, many of these kids have to start working after graduation from middle schools to support their family spending instead of spending money on education. Their salaries are also quite low because they are not well-educated and competitive compared to the huge amount of youths in society with university degrees. Then, in the future, these kids who have to quit high schools would also do not have the ability to afford their kids' education, and their families would just trap into the endless disadvantaged circulation.

Ideologies with ethic issues

Since the 1970s, the Chinese government has accepted and promoted neoliberalism to push economic growth. The continuously expanding inequality between regions and classes is the ironic contradiction behind the decision of pushing neoliberalism ideologies (Harvey ch.5). Some people believe that people who didn't succeed in educational systems and Gaokao is because they are not good enough and/or they haven’t worked hard. But actually, with regional and class inequality, students would have different resources and privileges when they compete with each other on Gaokao, which made Gaokao become a competition that is not that fair as it seems. So that the scores on Gaokao cannot represent a person’s quality or level of hardworking very well.

In addition, classism and regional discrimination still exist nowadays because of the neoliberalism ideologies that only value individuals' market worth instead of society as a whole. Many people still think people from lower classes and rural regions who haven't contribute a lot of market value to society, do not deserve high- quality educations since they didn't contribute to the establishment of high-quality educations also. Some people show sympathy for poverty and willing to donate money and books to charities that help poverty's education, but not many people are willing to give up privileges and relocate educational resources. Since higher education is not enough for everyone, giving out resources means the quality or amount of the education these privileged people already have will be impacted.

Possible solution

Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideas of everyone has to live in a large “world house” so the “world-wide neighborhood” should be transformed into “world-wide brotherhood” are adaptable values to counter the unethical ideologies of classism, regional discrimination, and the maintaining/expending regional and class inequality that caused unfair contradictions behind Gaokao. If people believe everyone lives in a large house, the society as a whole, and everyone is the family member of each other. Then people will be willing to help each other because if someone in the house is living in a poor condition, the house is not in a happy atmosphere either (Twohig). Same as the education systems for Gaokao, the education systems can only be considered as successful when everyone has the opportunity to have high-quality educations.

Asking people to give up their privilege directly might be a difficult decision, finding and creating shared values might be a more practical method. Shared values could benefit both higher and lower classes people from privileged and nonprivileged regions might be a possible solution to reduce the unfair contradiction behind Gaokao. Such as creating projects that help to construct infrastructure and building schools in marginalized nonprivileged areas. These projects can also create an environment to develop a potentially profitable economy that might give investors from higher classes and privileged regions the opportunities to expand their business operations, and also creating opportunities for the marginalized people for things such as jobs and educations.

Works Cited

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

Heinz, Nicholas. “Failing Grade: How China’s All-Important Exam is Stunting National Growth.” December 7, 2018. Berkeley Political Review.

King Jr., Martin Luther. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

“清华北大 2019 官方录取数据公布!各省录取分数对照表一览.” Sohu News, July 31, 2019. https://www.sohu.com/a/330511674_685014

Taylor, Astra, and Leah Hunt-Hendrix. “One For All: Only Solidarity Can Save the Planet.” Aug 26, 2019. The New Republic.

Twohig, Niall. WCWP 100, Feb 25, 2020, Warren College Student Activities Center, University of California, San Diego.

Twohig, Niall. WCWP 100, Mar 3, 2020, Warren College Student Activities Center, University of California, San Diego.

Zhang, Dandan, et al. “Education Inequality between Rural and Urban Areas of the People's Republic of China, Migrants’ Children Education, and Some Implications.” Asian Development Review, 2015, 32:1, 196-224. The MIT Press Journals.