Related stories

Thinking About Business in New Years Reeling Back the Years: Development of a Film Industry in China Samsung Expanding Handset Business in China The 10th China Beijing International Hi-Tech Expo Activity ScheduleThe 10th China Beijing International Hi-Tech Expo Activity Schedule Highlights of the Ninth China Beijing International High-tech Expo

Gaokao 30 Years that Changed China

While Gao Sheng, 18, of Wuhan sat for his national college entrance examinations (gaokao), his father Gao Jianjun, a successful businessman, waited anxiously with other parents outside the testing centre.

Gao Sheng was among 10 million senior high school graduates who sat for the annual exam on June 6–7, striving to qualify for one of the 5.6 million slots available in China’s higher learning institutions. Taking the gaokao is a critical moment in any Chinese student’s life, especially those who want to get ahead, and success on the test was essential if Gao Sheng wanted to realize his dream of attending Wuhan University, his father’s alma mater, a “key” institution of higher education directly under the Ministry of Education.

Things were not so easy for his father, who had no chance to attend a university 40 years ago. Gao Jianjun, instead, was sent to the countryside for “re-education” during the depths of the era now known as the Cultural Revolution (1966–76); most of the schools in China had been closed or were locked in revolutionary struggles of the day.

The elder Gao had finished high school when in 1968 he was sent to the countryside, along with 17 million “educated youths” from cities all across China. They were to be re-educated by living the lives of the country’s “poor and lower-middle peasants” as part of the late Chairman Mao Zedong's plans to ensure an “uninterrupted continuation” of the Chinese Revolution he had guided for so many years. In the parlance of the time, the youths were suspected of having caved-in to the “bourgeois reactionary line,” becoming “intellectual overlords” in need of remoulding in keeping with revolutionary values. 

Gao Junjian worked in the fields first and then as a cook in the dining-hall of his “production brigade” in a bleak South China village. His meagre pay was barely enough for subsistence. It never occurred to him that one day he would start life anew.

In 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to an end, following Chairman Mao’s death in September 1976. On May 24 of the following year, Deng Xiaoping, when addressing the First National Science Conference, urged the ruling Communist Party to “respect knowledge, respect talents.” Deng’s remarks gave hope far and wide that national college entrance exams would resume.

In winter of the same year, more than 5.7 million men and women, virtually all of whom had more or less the same experiences in life as Gao Jianjun, sat for the first gaokao after the Cultural Revolution. Only 220,000 were selected from among them to enter universities and colleges, the oldest being 36 and the youngest 15. Gao Junjian was admitted to Wuhan University and was asked to study economics, even though he had no idea of “economics” as a discipline of study.

He said, “I was so thirsty for knowledge, so eager to change my lot, that I was happy to study anything at any school.”

The 1977 gaokao did change his lot: he now owns an insurance company in Wuhan. It changed the lot of many other men and women who, like him, had spent their formative years raising pigs or growing crops. To name just a few: Bo Xilai, China’s commerce minister, who entered Peking University as a history major; Wang Yi, China’s ambassador to Japan, who was admitted into Beijing Second Institute of Foreign Languages to study the Japanese language; and Li Keqiang, the Communist Party secretary of Liaoning Province, who became a law student at Peking University. On this long list of celebrities who were born in the 1940s and 1950s, there were also renowned film directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who were admitted to the Beijing Film Academy.

The 1977 gaokao also changed China’s lot. According to the Ministry of Education, about 36 million students have been admitted to universities, colleges, vocational and technical schools over the past 30 years. Among them, millions are now serving as key personnel in political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, educational and national defence fields. According to a study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, nearly all (98 percent) of those currently in charge of China’s medium- and large-size State-owned enterprises have a university degree. Officials and experts agree that China owes much of its growing economic might and international influence to those talents produced by its universities over the past three decades.

During this time, China’s higher education has experienced tremendous changes. It used to have the sole task of bringing forth a contingent of specialists with a potential to become technocrats and politicians capable of taking over the helm of the country in the future. Now it is becoming something for any person hoping to continue studying after finishing a high school education. Among the candidates who sat for the 1977 gaokao, only 4.7 percent were able to see their dreams come true. In contrast, the rate was 56.85 percent for those who took the 2006 gaokao, and officials at the Ministry of Education have promised to ensure a constantly increasing rate in the future.

But the gaokao is not without its critics. Some say there are defects in the national college entrance examination system, though it is generally agreed that gaokao is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the only way to ensure fair play for selecting students with development potential. Critics assert the gaokao encourages rote learning and puts too much pressure on already overburdened high school graduates. Further, use of the same examination nationwide is considered a huge flaw, according to Yang Xuewei, who was director of the Ministry of Education’s National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) from 1987 to 1999.

Yang said, “The practice appears fair, but it fails to take into account the vastly differing conditions in different localities,” he told the Beijing News.

There is also criticism of what is called “regional discrimination” in the gaokao system. Under rules set by China’s education authorities, there are “key” and “local” universities. “Key” universities—those operating directly under the Ministry of Education—are allowed to recruit students from all over the country, while reserving up to 30 percent of their places for candidates in places where they are based. It so happens that most “key” universities are based in relatively developed regions. Beijing, for example, is home to scores of “key universities,” including Peking and Tsinghua, the best of all universities in China. This contrasts with Guizhou, a less-developed province that has only one “key university.”

Yang Dongping, director of the Higher Education Research Centre under the Beijing Institute of Technology, said, “That means Peking or Tsinghua recruits 30 percent of its new students from among candidates registered as Beijing residents, while the ‘quota’ could be a mere 2 or 3 percent for a province like Guizhou. To enter the same ‘key’ university, Peking or Tsinghua, candidates from outside Beijing Municipality must have a much higher score than candidates from Beijing. Can you call that fair?

“No matter where they are based,” he continued, “ ‘key universities’ are funded by taxpayers across the country. We need to get rid of ‘regional discrimination’ found in the gaokao.”

Despite all its defects, Yang Dongping believes the exam, at least for now, is the fairest way to measure a student’s talent. “Gaokao scores are a safeguard for children of laobaixing (ordinary people) against infringements upon their rights. Without the gaokao that recognizes test scores as the ultimate measure, the rich and powerful are most likely to abuse their wealth and power to get the best university places for their children, whether the children have done well in school or not.”

These days, the Chinese people have a much wider range of alternatives in seeking self-improvement, in part because the country is becoming increasingly market-oriented. For children of many laobaixing, however, the gaokao remains the only way to bring about a change in their lot.

Li Zhaoxia, who will soon graduate from the Beijing Foreign Studies University, has just found a job at a high school in the city. She is from a rural village in Jiangsu Province in East China. “Had I failed in gaokao,” said the English teacher-to-be, “I could have, like many country girls, ended up as a married woman busy with a household and having to toil in the fields day after day.”

Instead, Li is happy with the job she has gotten: “I will have a good salary, more than enough to support myself. My employer has promised to pay for the apartment I will live in.” Li will also be able to send a part of her savings to her parents back at home, who are barely able to make ends meet.

Though from what is now a wealthy family, Gao Sheng in Wuhan said he dared not take the gaokao lightly. During his last year of senior high school he worked hard every night to get prepared for it, knowing that in this increasingly competitive society, one needs knowledge to be somebody.

Outside the middle school where Gao Sheng was taking the exams, his father said, “I feel as if I am taking the exams,” as he waved a paper fan to cool himself in the summer heat.

Asked why he was so nervous, he replied: “Who doesn’t want his or her son to become a ‘dragon’?”

The time-honoured Chinese proverb expresses the hope of most Chinese parents for success in their children’s lives.