Less People are Taking the College Entrance Exam in China

job hunting of college graduates

The news that attracted most viewer comments on sina.com.cn on Friday was the one about the impact of the dire job market for college graduates. The China Youth Daily story reported that the number of people registered for the 2009 College Entrance Exam decreased in most provinces in China. Many places, such as Hebei Province, saw registered exam takers decrease for the first time in decades. The overall number of registered exam takers will still remain at a high level of about 10 million, according to the China Youth Daily.

The College Entrance Exam is the harshest competition for generations of young Chinese since the late 1970s. Every year, millions of teenagers taking the same exam on the same days to get into a relatively small number of higher education institutions has become a prominent and rather unique social phenomenon in China. The exam has been fervently condemned as well as defended. It is seen as the culprit for the test-oriented education approach in China that is blamed for suffocating the creativity and independent thinking of tens of millions of Chinese students. But at the same time, the system stands tall over the years as important means for providing fair opportunities for the poor and powerless, especially young adults from rural area.

The number of registered exam takers generally kept increasing in previous years, and doubled from 2002 to 2008. It is surprising for many to see the number decreas nation wide. China Youth Daily pointed at the difficulty for college graduates to find a job in recent years as the main reason for the decrease. Another reason the newspaper discusses was the increasing trend of high school graduates attending college abroad. Nearly 7000 comments posted by viewers, however, reveal some other reasons for less people wanting to pursue a college degree, which used to be regarded as the best choice for young people to have a better future.

Some complain that college education is not necessary, either because knowing someone is more helpful in finding a job, or because employers start to look at the actual capability, rather than diploma when hiring. But many people seem to be displeased by the fact that social connections, or guanxi, still play a bigger role in personal development than education or talents in Chinese society. Some criticize that college education in China is like a joke, neither faculty nor students taking it seriously, and students can learn little from college. Another reason indicated is the high cost of college education. “It is better to start to work and make money early than going to college, ” one comment says. Some also say that less people are taking the exam simply because the population is decreasing because of the one-child policy.

Beijing’s New Health Care Reform Blueprint: Offering both Hope and Doubt

In setting up the new health care reform guideline, the Chinese government did the right thing by putting public interests before profit-making, and by striving for equality between rural and urban areas. 

Millions of Chinese people who have suffered in various ways from a twisted and corrupt health care system would probably feel relieved upon reading the news: at least on the paper, the government clearly stated that it is on our side. China’s vast group of farmers would probably hail the new reform plan as well, since it set the tone for setting up a health care system that will provide equal care to both urban and rural residents, limit drug prices and build more health care facilities in rural area, according to a story in the South China Morning Post. 

But a lot of people would not jump up and down on the new plan just yet. As Chinese people have learned over so many years and so many things, a good plan does not guarantee a good result. 

Yes, the government is now saying that public hospitals should no longer pursue profits as their priority and treat patients based on their ability to pay. But how to maintain or improve the quality of health care? 

The current plan is issued by the central government and serves as a guideline, while the local governments get to set up specific rules and regulations for hospitals to follow. Will local governments faithfully adhere to the line set by the government? Many people would doubt that because in many places, the local authorities no longer treat directions from the state government seriously. 

Even if good rules and regulations will be in place, no one can be sure that they will be well followed. Can the good rules get over bad officials who have their hands in all fields that could bring them extra cash and a bureaucratic system that is so corrupt? Will China’s medical education system produce enough practitioners with not only deft hands but also good hearts, who can therefore sustain a health care system that truly serves the public? 

On the surface, it sounds like a good thing that the government finally decided to intervene and do its part in fixing a corrupt health care system. At the same time, however, the reform nevertheless falls into the old circle of relaxing and tightening control, whereby the government relaxes rules to encourage reform in a certain area, only to rush to get the control back after market-oriented behaviors went awry and hurt the public. 

China’s health care system is now a big mess but can’t afford of being unfixed. In a society that is already threatened by all kinds of social conflicts, a sick health care system could only aggravate public grievance. Fixing it is a big challenge and it waits to be seen whether the Chinese government can meet the challenge.  

2007 NPC, CPPCC Journal, Day 11

Despite moving into a city, a rural resident still has to live with his social status as a peasant





Outspoken Comments

Stop Using “Peasant” to Avoid Discrimination
China should eliminate residence-based discrimination and stop differentiating between rural and urban residents, Ma Kening, a NPC delegate from Shaanxi, proposed to China's top legislature.

In the proposal, which Ms. Ma also posted on her blog at people.com.cn, she pointed out that rural residents, or nong min (peasants) as they are usually called, have not been granted full citizen rights as those who live in cities, including political rights, education and social security, such as government sponsored health care and pension.

“The word 'nong min' should not appear in China’s formal law texts. The term itself is a discrimination against citizens living in the rural area,” Ms. Ma wrote, and suggested the word be replaced with “rural residents” or “rural citizens” in the Constitution and other laws.

For almost fifty years, China has had a residence registration system that distinguishes between rural and urban residents, who hold different type of residence certificate. Those who hold a rural residence certificate are not entitled to many rights that are enjoyed by urban residents.

“Nong min is not a social status but a occupation. The status should be ‘citizen,’” says one public comment on Ms.Ma's blog. “Now, nong min is treated as a social status, and [a nong min] is still a nong min even when he became a factory worker or entrepreneur. This is just wrong!”

Another comment said it is laughable that “one country has two kinds of citizen,” and complained that the current discriminating system “has given too many unfair treatments to rural citizens.”

Beside Ms. Ma, several other two-meeting members also brought up similar proposals, calling on abolishing the current dual structure of the residence registration system and replacing it with a uniformed one, although some experts said it is still not the right time to get rid of the system all together.

Ma Kening's blog
http://blog.people.com.cn/blog/u/makenin

Public Comments
http://blog.people.com.cn/blog/log/reply4onelog.jspe?log_id=1173764253733357&site_id=36941

Other similar proposals
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-03-15/074911415887s.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2007-03-12/093111392692s.shtml


Highlight
The CPPCC concluded its session on Thursday after passing a political resolution.
http://www.10thnpc.org.cn/english/2007lh/203005.htm

Chinese New Year Travel Frenzy/ Harsher Punishments for One-Child Policy Violation

Chinese New Year Travel Frenzy Again

Crowds buying train tickes at Beijing West Station/China News Service

It is again the time for the annual national ritual of crazy Chinese New Year travel. This year’s “Spring Festival Travel” season started on Saturday and will end on March 14, almost one month after the Chinese New Year.

Every year around this time, millions of people, mostly rural residents seeking a better living in cities, pack up and flood toward railways, highways, even airports lately, to go back to their hometowns for family gathering, practicing a thousands-of-years-old tradition.

As China's economy grows and living standard increases, as well as many young people seek career in large cities away from hometown, the festival has become less about having new clothes and nice food as it used to be, but more about reconnecting family members and strengthening personal bonds that have been largely weakened by a more migrating and aggressive society. At the same time, China’s transportation system faces more pressure.

No matter how much the meaning and celebration of the festival has changed over the past decades, one thing seems to have stayed, and that is railway as the major holiday transportation.

In recent years, over one hundred million people were transported every year by train from cities to villages or other cities and back. The mast majority of the travelers, migrant workers, college students and career beginners, still can not afford air fare, although air traffic during the festival season has been increasing. To them, travel by train is fast enough and cheap enough.

This year, a lot of talks have been surrounded a new policy: for the first time in six years, China’s railway authorities would not increase train fare during the holiday season.

Railways in China are almost all owned and run by the government. In an attempt to alleviate the pressure on railway during the holiday season, the authorities started to increase train fare in 2000 and kept doing so in the following years. Despite the price hike, the amount of holiday travelers did not decrease. Last year, it reached a record high of 149 million, according to China Youth Daily.

Last month, the authorities announced that the annual train fare increase was scraped this year.

Many people, including National People’s Congress representatives had advocated for abolishing the routine price raise. Now that the central government is striving to establish a harmonious society and showing more benign toward migrant workers, the end to the price hike seems to make sense.
http://news.sina.com.cn/z/2007chunyun/index.shtml

The Rich and Famous Facing Harsher Punishments for One-Child Policy Violation

Authorities in Zhejiang announced on Wednesday that they will start to levy high fees on celebrities and high income people who violate the one-child policy. For those who do not care about paying such money and continue to have more than one child, the authorities will expose them to the public, Xinhua reported.

It has been an open secret in China that rich people, including some celebrities, can have more than one child by paying “social caring fee” to authorities. The public has recently expressed displeasure toward the issue by calling it unfair in a survey.

Mr. Zhang Weiqing, director of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, also said in Guangzhou earlier last month that rich and famous people breaching the one-child limitation had “very bad social influence.”

Zhejiang provincial officials said they have paid much attention to family plan violations among those rich and famous, who are usually influential “public figures” and should have been role models of obeying the law.

As a matter of fact, exchanging money for rights have become one of the unfairness much loathed by Chinese people, the mast majority of which are still not rich while a small number of people have obtained enormous amount of fortune by means sometimes illegal. As one of the most affluent provinces in China, Zhejiang may have set a good example of government’s efforts for social fairness.
http://news.sina.com.cn/z/2007chunyun/index.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-11/145210976987s.shtml

----by Josie Liu