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Education in China revolves around a 9 year schooling process followed by college acceptance based on test scores. However, children originating from richer cities are more likely to go on to a better job, while students from poorer cities are more likely to work primary sector jobs later in life.

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Op-Ed Contributor

BEIJING - EVERY September, the campuses of Peking and Tsinghua Universities, often called the Harvard and M.I.T. of China, brim with eager new students, the winners of China's cutthroat education system. These young men and women possess the outlook of cosmopolitan youth worldwide: sporting designer clothes and wielding high-end smartphones, they share experiences of foreign travel and bond over common fondness for Western television shows like "The Big Bang Theory" and "Sherlock."

They are destined for bright futures: In a few decades, they will fill high-powered positions in government and become executives in state banks and multinational companies. But their ever-expanding career possibilities belie the increasingly narrow slice of society they represent. The percentage of students at Peking University from rural origins, for example, has fallen to about 10 percent in the past decade, down from around 30 percent in the 1990s. An admissions officer at Tsinghua University told a reporter last year that the typical undergraduate was "someone who grew up in cities, whose parents are civil servants and teachers, go on family trips at least once a year, and have studied abroad in high school."

China's state education system, which offers nine years of compulsory schooling and admits students to colleges strictly through exam scores, is often hailed abroad as a paradigm for educational equity. The impression is reinforced by Chinese students' consistently stellar performance in international standardized tests. But this reputation is built on a myth.

While China has phenomenally expanded basic education for its people, quadrupling its output of college graduates in the past decade, it has also created a system that discriminates against its less wealthy and well-connected citizens, thwarting social mobility at every step with bureaucratic and financial barriers.

A huge gap in educational opportunities between students from rural areas and those from cities is one of the main culprits. Some 60 million students in rural schools are "left-behind" children, cared for by their grandparents as their parents seek work in faraway cities. While many of their urban peers attend schools equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and well-trained teachers, rural students often huddle in decrepit school buildings and struggle to grasp advanced subjects such as English and chemistry amid a dearth of qualified instructors.

"Rural students stand virtually no chance when competing academically with their urban counterparts," Jiang Nengjie, a friend and independent filmmaker who made a documentary on the left-behind children, told me. As a result, he said, most young people from his hometown village in central China head directly to factories in Guangdong Province, on the southern coast, after finishing middle school, because "the return is larger than going to a third-rate college."

For migrant children who follow their parents to cities, the opportunity for a decent education is similarly limited, as various government policies foil their attempts at full integration. The hukou system - a residency status that ties access to subsidized social services to one's hometown - denies rural children the right to enter urban public schools. Many migrant children are relegated to private schools that charge higher tuition and offer subpar education. Recent reforms in cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai have had only a tangential impact on leveling the playing field.

In Beijing, home to eight million migrant workers, preconditions for admission seem intended less to promote educational equity than to exacerbate the discrimination. Some parents have switched jobs, sued the government and even engineered divorces to get around onerous documentation requirements, which often vary from district to district. Many urban migrants ultimately have no choice but to send their children back to their rural hometowns for inferior schooling.

China requires a vast majority of students to take the national college entrance examination in their home province, and elite universities allocate higher admission quotas to first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. One researcher showed that an applicant from Beijing was 41 times more likely to be admitted to Peking University than a comparable student from the poor and largely rural province of Anhui.

Even an urban residency status doesn't ensure educational equity among city dwellers. The quality of urban schools varies widely, and the competition to enter top schools has spawned rampant corruption. Parents fork out tens of thousands of dollars under the guise of "voluntary donations" to secure a slot for their children in elite schools. At top-ranked high schools, such as the one I attended in Beijing, these charges can reach $130,000. Further advantage can be purchased by parents who can pay handsomely to hire teachers to offer extra tutoring to their children, a practice discouraged by the authorities but widespread in reality.

To curb the culture of graft, Beijing has implemented policies this year that require students to attend elementary schools in their home districts. But the new rules, instead of stopping parents from gaming the system, simply channeled the cash to another market. Property in well-regarded school districts became Beijing's hottest commodity this spring. Families have been tripping over one another to trade spacious homes in posh compounds for dilapidated flats next to prestigious elementary schools. In a sought-after neighborhood in the Xicheng district, for example, a 107-square-foot flat was listed for $550,000.

CHINESE education, having always placed enormous emphasis on test scores, is now becoming a game of another set of numbers. When graduating high school students walk into test centers to take the most important exam in their lives, their chances are determined not only by a decade of assiduous study, but also by the costs of their cramming lessons, the years their parents have toiled in cities in exchange for an urban residency permit, and the admission quotas universities allot to the provinces. For poor students, it's harder than ever to overcome the odds.

My mother, who attended Peking University in the late 1970s, remembered being surrounded by classmates of all walks of life - from the heirs of party officials and the scions of intellectuals, to workers fresh out of factories and peasants hailing from far-flung provinces. In the decades that followed, the economic opening that has led to vast wealth, along with extreme income inequality, has all but obliterated such diversity in the top tier of Chinese education.

In China, which pioneered the use of merit-based examinations to fill official positions, an educational system that was once a great equalizer now reinforces inequality.

Chang Qing, a friend and mother of a 16-year-old girl, has been preparing her daughter, Xiaoshuang, for America since the girl was a toddler. She played her tapes of English lessons made from Disney movies, and later hosted a steady stream of exchange students from America to hone her child's accent. Now, her daughter speaks impeccable English and attends a private academy in Beijing where annual tuition is around $24,000. Ms. Chang believes that nothing short of an Ivy League education will suffice.

On a trip to the countryside in Hunan Province (the home of Mao Zedong), I met Jiang Heng, a skinny 11-year-old whose parents work in a handbag factory in neighboring Guangdong. The boy attends a local elementary school that takes him an hour and half to walk to and, together with his younger brother, is looked after by his grandparents. I asked him what he wanted to do after high school. He looked confused, as if the answer was too obvious. "I want to be a migrant worker," he told me, without blinking.

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Op-Ed Contributor BEIJING - EVERY September, the campuses of Peking and Tsinghua Universities, often called the Harvard and M.I.T. of China, brim with eager new students, the winners of China's cutthroat education system.

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China's "model for development"    (Maddux)

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China's "model for development"    (Maddux)

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China is one of few countries that believe in a communist lifestyle. Because of that, China has a self sufficient type of development. In a self sufficient government, money and lifestyles are rationed equally. They also create "barriers" to limit imports from countries. In saying that, China does export a lot of clothing, electronic equipment and machinery to countries like ours. They do import some valuable things like petroleum, circuits, iron ore, gold, and cars .

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China's Demographic Indicators of Development (Maddux)

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China's Demographic Indicators of Development (Maddux)

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China's Life Expectancy: 75.5 years.
China's NIR: 5.43
China's Birth Rate: 12.4
China's IMR: 12.2 deaths/ 1000 live births

China's longevity is average for all the countries at 75.5 years. The overall life expectancy around the entire globe is 68 years. China's infant mortality rate is at 12.2 deaths. The world average for IMR is resting at 49.4 deaths according to the United Nations. So China's overall health seems to be doing about average for all of the countries. It's especially hard to keep a country with 1,373,541,273 people healthy. They tried to slow down the population in 1979 by creating a "one child policy". They knew they were gonna struggle supplying for the overpopulation. But in 2015, China decided to remove that policy.

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China is currently able to access a group of products called rare earth minerals. These are used in cell phones, batteries, computer hard drives, light bulbs, & wind power turbines.

(Tyler Railey)

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(Emma)

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Despite the pain, millions of Chinese women stood firm in their devotion to the tradition

Smithsonian Magazine |

For the past year I have been working with Britain's BBC television to make a documentary series on the history of women. In the latest round of filming there was an incident that haunts me. It took place during a segment on the social changes that affected Chinese women in the late 13th century.

These changes can be illustrated by the practice of female foot-binding. Some early evidence for it comes from the tomb of Lady Huang Sheng, the wife of an imperial clansman, who died in 1243. Archaeologists discovered tiny, misshapen feet that had been wrapped in gauze and placed inside specially shaped "lotus shoes." For one of my pieces on camera, I balanced a pair of embroidered doll shoes in the palm of my hand, as I talked about Lady Huang and the origins of foot-binding. When it was over, I turned to the museum curator who had given me the shoes and made some comment about the silliness of using toy shoes. This was when I was informed that I had been holding the real thing. The miniature "doll" shoes had in fact been worn by a human. The shock of discovery was like being doused with a bucket of freezing water.

Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon. She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones. In addition to altering the shape of the foot, the practice also produced a particular sort of gait that relied on the thigh and buttock muscles for support. From the start, foot-binding was imbued with erotic overtones. Gradually, other court ladies-with money, time and a void to fill-took up foot-binding, making it a status symbol among the elite.

A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size translated into its own form of currency and a means of achieving upward mobility. The most desirable bride possessed a three-inch foot, known as a "golden lotus." It was respectable to have four-inch feet-a silver lotus-but feet five inches or longer were dismissed as iron lotuses. The marriage prospects for such a girl were dim indeed.

As I held the lotus shoes in my hand, it was horrifying to realize that every aspect of women's beauty was intimately bound up with pain. Placed side by side, the shoes were the length of my iPhone and less than a half-inch wider. My index finger was bigger than the "toe" of the shoe. It was obvious why the process had to begin in childhood when a girl was 5 or 6.

First, her feet were plunged into hot water and her toenails clipped short. Then the feet were massaged and oiled before all the toes, except the big toes, were broken and bound flat against the sole, making a triangle shape. Next, her arch was strained as the foot was bent double. Finally, the feet were bound in place using a silk strip measuring ten feet long and two inches wide. These wrappings were briefly removed every two days to prevent blood and pus from infecting the foot. Sometimes "excess" flesh was cut away or encouraged to rot. The girls were forced to walk long distances in order to hasten the breaking of their arches. Over time the wrappings became tighter and the shoes smaller as the heel and sole were crushed together. After two years the process was complete, creating a deep cleft that could hold a coin in place. Once a foot had been crushed and bound, the shape could not be reversed without a woman undergoing the same pain all over again.

As the practice of foot-binding makes brutally clear, social forces in China then subjugated women. And the impact can be appreciated by considering three of China's greatest female figures: the politician Shangguan Wan'er (664-710), the poet Li Qing-zhao (1084-c.1151) and the warrior Liang Hongyu (c.1100-1135). All three women lived before foot-binding became the norm. They had distinguished themselves in their own right-not as voices behind the throne, or muses to inspire others, but as self-directed agents. Though none is well known in the West, the women are household names in China.

Shangguan began her life under unfortunate circumstances. She was born the year that her grandfather, the chancellor to Emperor Gaozong, was implicated in a political conspiracy against the emperor's powerful wife, Empress Wu Zetian. After the plot was exposed, the irate empress had the male members of the Shangguan family executed and all the female members enslaved. Nevertheless, after being informed of the 14-year-old Shangguan Wan'er's exceptional brilliance as a poet and scribe, the empress promptly employed the girl as her personal secretary. Thus began an extraordinary 27-year relationship between China's only female emperor and the woman whose family she had destroyed.

Wu eventually promoted Shangguan from cultural minister to chief minister, giving her charge of drafting the imperial edicts and decrees. The position was as dangerous as it had been during her grandfather's time. On one occasion the empress signed her death warrant only to have the punishment commuted at the last minute to facial disfigurement. Shangguan survived the empress's downfall in 705, but not the political turmoil that followed. She could not help becoming embroiled in the surviving progeny's plots and counterplots for the throne. In 710 she was persuaded or forced to draft a fake document that acceded power to the Dowager Empress Wei. During the bloody clashes that erupted between the factions, Shangguan was dragged from her house and beheaded.

A later emperor had her poetry collected and recorded for posterity. Many of her poems had been written at imperial command to commemorate a particular state occasion. But she also contributed to the development of the "estate poem," a form of poetry that celebrates the courtier who willingly chooses the simple, pastoral life.

Shangguan is considered by some scholars to be one of the forebears of the High Tang, a golden age in Chinese poetry. Nevertheless, her work pales in significance compared with the poems of Li Qingzhao, whose surviving relics are kept in a museum in her hometown of Jinan-the "City of Springs"-in Shandong province.

Li lived during one of the more chaotic times of the Song era, when the country was divided into northern China under the Jin dynasty and southern China under the Song. Her husband was a mid-ranking official in the Song government. They shared an intense passion for art and poetry and were avid collectors of ancient texts. Li was in her 40s when her husband died, consigning her to an increasingly fraught and penurious widowhood that lasted for another two decades. At one point she made a disastrous marriage to a man whom she divorced after a few months. An exponent of ci poetry-lyric verse written to popular tunes, Li poured out her feelings about her husband, her widowhood and her subsequent unhappiness. She eventually settled in Lin'an, the capital of the southern Song.

Li's later poems became increasingly morose and despairing. But her earlier works are full of joie de vivre and erotic desire. Like this one attributed to her:

Literary criticsin later dynasties struggled to reconcile the woman with the poetry, finding her remarriage and subsequent divorce an affront to Neo-Confucian morals. Ironically, between Li and her near-contemporary Liang Hongyu, the former was regarded as the more transgressive. Liang was an ex-courtesan who had followed her soldier-husband from camp to camp. Already beyond the pale of respectability, she was not subjected to the usual censure reserved for women who stepped beyond the nei-the female sphere of domestic skills and household management-to enter the wei, the so-called male realm of literary learning and public service.

Liang grew up at a military base commanded by her father. Her education included military drills and learning the martial arts. In 1121, she met her husband, a junior officer named Han Shizhong. With her assistance he rose to become a general, and together they formed a unique military partnership, defending northern and central China against incursions by the Jurchen confederation known as the Jin kingdom.

In 1127, Jin forces captured the Song capital at Bianjing, forcing the Chinese to establish a new capital in the southern part of the country. The defeat almost led to a coup d'état, but Liang and her husband were among the military commanders who sided with the beleaguered regime. She was awarded the title "Lady Defender" for her bravery. Three years later, Liang achieved immortality for her part in a naval engagement on the Yangtze River known as the Battle of Huangtiandang. Using a combination of drums and flags, she was able to signal the position of the Jin fleet to her husband. The general cornered the fleet and held it for 48 days.

Liang and Han lie buried together in a tomb at the foot of Lingyan Mountain. Her reputation as a national heroine remained such that her biography was included in the 16th-century Sketch of a Model for Women by Lady Wang, one of the four books that became the standard Confucian classics texts for women's education.

Though it may not seem obvious, the reasons that the Neo-Confucians classed Liang as laudable, but not Shangguan or Li, were part of the same societal impulses that led to the widespread acceptance of foot-binding. First and foremost, Liang's story demonstrated her unshakable devotion to her father, then to her husband, and through him to the Song state. As such, Liang fulfilled her duty of obedience to the proper (male) order of society.

The Song dynasty was a time of tremendous economic growth, but also great social insecurity. In contrast to medieval Europe, under the Song emperors, class status was no longer something inherited but earned through open competition. The old Chinese aristocratic families found themselves displaced by a meritocratic class called the literati. Entrance was gained via a rigorous set of civil service exams that measured mastery of the Confucian canon. Not surprisingly, as intellectual prowess came to be valued more highly than brute strength, cultural attitudes regarding masculine and feminine norms shifted toward more rarefied ideals.

Foot-binding, which started out as a fashionable impulse, became an expression of Han identity after the Mongols invaded China in 1279. The fact that it was only performed by Chinese women turned the practice into a kind of shorthand for ethnic pride. Periodic attempts to ban it, as the Manchus tried in the 17th century, were never about foot-binding itself but what it symbolized. To the Chinese, the practice was daily proof of their cultural superiority to the uncouth barbarians who ruled them. It became, like Confucianism, another point of difference between the Han and the rest of the world. Ironically, although Confucian scholars had originally condemned foot-binding as frivolous, a woman's adherence to both became conflated as a single act.

Earlier forms of Confucianism had stressed filial piety, duty and learning. The form that developed during the Song era, Neo-Confucianism, was the closest China had to a state religion. It stressed the indivisibility of social harmony, moral orthodoxy and ritualized behavior. For women, Neo-Confucianism placed extra emphasis on chastity, obedience and diligence. A good wife should have no desire other than to serve her husband, no ambition other than to produce a son, and no interest beyond subjugating herself to her husband's family-meaning, among other things, she must never remarry if widowed. Every Confucian primer on moral female behavior included examples of women who were prepared to die or suffer mutilation to prove their commitment to the "Way of the Sages." The act of foot-binding-the pain involved and the physical limitations it created-became a woman's daily demonstration of her own commitment to Confucian values.

The truth, no matter how unpalatable, is that foot-binding was experienced, perpetuated and administered by women. Though utterly rejected in China now-the last shoe factory making lotus shoes closed in 1999-it survived for a thousand years in part because of women's emotional investment in the practice. The lotus shoe is a reminder that the history of women did not follow a straight line from misery to progress, nor is it merely a scroll of patriarchy writ large. Shangguan, Li and Liang had few peers in Europe in their own time. But with the advent of foot-binding, their spiritual descendants were in the West. Meanwhile, for the next 1,000 years, Chinese women directed their energies and talents toward achieving a three-inch version of physical perfection.

About Amanda Foreman

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Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium

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Smithsonian Magazine | For the past year I have been working with Britain's BBC television to make a documentary series on the history of women. In the latest round of filming there was an incident that haunts me. It took place during a segment on the social changes that affected Chinese women in the late 13th century.

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China is ranked  close to the US in the Gender Equality  Ranking, meaning they have relatively the same ratios from men to women. However, the previous one child policy has put pressure on women to be more focus on child care while their spouses work in business. Currently, there is no specific "role" for women, but only a select few are involved in top tier occupations such as CEO or poljobs. (Emma)

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By realizing altering chances on the job market, women in China are equally facing new perceptions on their role in society. Background
China's past is critical to understanding the role of women in China today. In Imperial China, women assumed a relatively subordinate position to men. Women did possess some power; within the family content, for example, they would often assume a role of leadership. However, this power did not generally extend beyond the home and familial affairs. In the period between the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the role of women in Chinese society began to change dramatically.

Although women are longer repressed by the immobilizing foot-binding tradition practiced for generations, they now experience different limitations and social pressures. Whilst communism pushed men and women to work together, China's traditional Confucianism, which berates "strong women," lingers. This ideological contradiction results in a society wherein female high-flyers experience difficulty finding partners and women face prejudice in higher education and the workplace. Consequently, financial constraints are common, and many women admit that financial incentives are often more important than personal compatibility when searching for a partner.
Why is the Role of Women in China Relevant?
In China, as in all societies today, the question of "the role of women" is debated across different social groups. Rapid economic development has had major implications for China's population. Whereas there are increased opportunities for all, there continues to be a glass-ceiling for many.

The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report (2010) gave China a "Gender Equality Ranking" of 38, just below the US (37) and far above Brazil (80), another member of the "Big Four." Nevertheless, women's positions of leadership in employment can be graphed as a pyramid: the nearer to the top, the fewer women to be found. The Central Government recognized this disparity within the civil service sector, and, since 2008, it has actively encouraged local governments to employ more women in leadership positions. The unequal gender representation in the workplace, however, is symptomatic of diverse underlying issues.

Globalization and the economic development of China present increased opportunities along with increased competition. Characterized by over-population and a high percentage of educated citizens, China is a society wherein women lose out to their male counterparts. The one-child policy introduced in 1978 places huge pressures on young families, as the care for elder grandparents falls to one grandchild and his or her spouse. Because enterprises tend to favor male employees, child-rearing falls primarily to the women.

Today, the role of women in China differs across social boundaries. Although there are, in theory, endless opportunities, only some women can access them. There is no accepted role for women; some women are CEOs and government officials, whilst others opt for completely different lifestyles. Current affairs such as the scandal involving Bo Xilai's wife and China's first female astronauts are gaining much press, thereby drawing increased attention to the question of the role of women. The rapid development of China has shifted the issues faced by women, and many are now beginning to scrutinize their role within society, the economy and politics.

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The Role of Women in China - Fair Observer

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By realizing altering chances on the job market, women in China are equally facing new perceptions on their role in society. Background China's past is critical to understanding the role of women in China today. In Imperial China, women assumed a relatively subordinate position to men.

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China is ranked #57 in the GEM. Women hold 20.3% of the seats in parliament, make up 17% of legislators, senior officials, and managers, and make up 52% of professional and technical workers. The ratio of estimated female to male earned income is 64 to 100. (Emma)

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China's economy has shown massive growth, averaging 10% GDP growth over the last 30 years. China's economy has also grown about 48 times (from $168.367 billion to $8.222 trillion).

(Tyler Railey)

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6,807.43 (2013)

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CNhttp://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CN

(Tyler Railey)

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Services make up 36% of China's Economy

With the growing economy of China, its services sector of the economy is also growing and is now the biggest section in the economy. Most service jobs in China relate to industry, such as: shipping and logistics, managing products, technical support for factories / businesses, customer support, and more. There is also many service jobs in tourism, internet, telecommunications, and travel. Tertiary jobs make up for 46% of the China's GDP.

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30% percent of China's economy is made up of secondary sector jobs.
Steel production, metal working, and other heavy industry jobs make up most of the secondary sector of China. One issue with the industry sector of China is that it focuses on quantity of products rather than quality. Industry accounts for 44% of China's GDP.

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Primary Sector: Agriculture / Mining -Elias

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Primary Sector: Agriculture / Mining -Elias

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34% of China's economy is based on the primary sector of the economy.
China grows rice, wheat, corn, millet, soybeans, and tea, cotton, and tobacco. China also extracts many natural resources such as coal and oil. China also has a lot of natural gas, but they do not extract much of it. Agriculture makes up 10% of China's GDP and mining accounts for 1% of of it's GDP.

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https://www.internations.org/china-expats/guide/17875-economy-finance/china-s-economy-an-overview-17867

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Total population: 96.4%

Male: 98.2%

Female: 94.5%
(Emma)

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China is in the very high human development category with a GDI of 0.958.

Females have a higher life expectancy (86.8 years) compared to males (81.2 years)

The expected years of schooling is almost equal (15.7 years for females and 15.5 years for males), but males have a higher average years of schooling with 11.9 years to females' 10.9 years

(Emma)

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Due to the previous one-child policy in China, the pyramid is symmetrical as a result of little gender selection. Two large population sections can be found in the 20's and 40's areas. (Emma)
https://populationpyramid.net/china/2016/

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How the Economy got to Where it is Today: -Elias

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How the Economy got to Where it is Today: -Elias

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China was one of the first developed countries, defined by an established government. China however faced many economic problems because the country had constant warfare between Chinese dynasties. China's economic reform of 1979 transformed China's economy to be a major economic world power.

Economic Reform: (1:24)

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How China became the world's second largest economy

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China has the world's second largest economy by GDP. Until 2015, China had the fastest growing economy, now passed by Ethiopia. China is the largest manufacturing economy in the world and exports more goods than any other country. China is also the largest trading nation in the world.

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Watch from 1:09 to 3:09 (2:00)

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2,000 Years of Chinese History! The Mandate of Heaven and Confucius: World History #7