Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
NANNING, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) — Pham Thi Nguyet Hoa, a vendor living in Vietnam’s Mong Cai, comes to Dongxing, a southern Chinese port city, to sell Vietnam fruits every day. When night falls, she often ends up with thousands of yuan in her pocket, much more than what she can earn at home.
“Most of my customers are Chinese, and it is very convenient to exchange Chinese yuan to Vietnamese Dong as many banks in Dongxing have this currency exchange service,” said Pham.
Tourism has been a pillar industry in the border city of southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Dongxing port saw 12 million people, of which half were tourists, pass through last year, ranking first among all land ports in China.
In the first six months this year, tourism consumption at the port exceeded 6.2 billion yuan (874 million U.S. dollars), up 40.4 percent from the year before.
The flourishing border tourism has brought a huge demand for currency exchange, with a slew of financial reforms rolled out in recent years.
In 2014, the ABC China (Dongxing Experimental Zone) ASEAN Currency business center was established in Dongxing, allowing direct convertibility of Chinese yuan and Vietnamese Dong.
In February 2018, a total of 8 million yuan was transferred in cash from Vietnam to China, marking the first cross-border cash transfer in Guangxi between China and Vietnam.
Fan Zuojun, vice president of Guangxi University, said the cross-border cash transfer will further promote the financial cooperation between China and Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as deepen reform and push forward the internationalization of the Chinese currency in the region.
China and ASEAN countries have always maintained close relations in trade.
In January 2010, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was set up, which has significantly boosted bilateral trade. China has maintained its position as the largest trading partner of ASEAN for 10 consecutive years, and trade between China and ASEAN has skyrocketed tenfold from 16 years ago to 587.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.
In the first half of 2019, ASEAN became China’s second-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade volume reaching 291.85 billion U.S. dollars, up 4.2 percent year on year.
Guangxi’s geographical advantages have also given it huge development dividends over the past decades. ASEAN has been Guangxi’s largest trade partner for 19 consecutive years, and trade volume between Guangxi and ASEAN in the first seven months of this year topped 128 billion yuan, accounting for 48.7 percent of Guangxi’s total foreign trade.
Now with the launch of the Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in August, bilateral trade exchanges are expected to embrace another golden opportunity.
The pilot FTZ, with a total area of nearly 120 square km, will focus on modern financial services, smart logistics, digital economy, port shipping logistics, international trade and cross-border tourism, among others.
Guangxi vows to make greater efforts to consolidate its financial strength and build itself into an ASEAN-oriented financial portal, with over 90 financial reform measures being rolled out to further facilitate trade and investment and promote innovation in financial services with ASEAN countries.
Video of staff washing tableware with laundry detergent goes viral
A primary school principal has been sacked after it emerged laundry detergent was used in the canteen to wash tableware. Photo: Thepaper.cn
The head of a primary school in northeastern China has been sacked and a government investigation is underway into the use of laundry washing powder to clean tableware in the school canteen.
The scandal came to light when a video of canteen staff washing up at Dongfeng Primary School in Zuanghe, Liaoning province, went viral on Chinese social media.
The video shows staff, wearing white uniforms and aprons, cleaning plates and bowls in basins containing water tainted with laundry detergent. It is unclear when the incident happened.
In a statement on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, on Tuesday, the municipal government said the head of the school had been dismissed and representatives had been assigned by the authorities to take charge of the school’s daily operation. Due diligence investigations of the relevant department would begin “immediately”, the statement said.
Chinese school heads told to eat with pupils after string of scandals
The local administration for market regulation had also been ordered to speed up an examination of the food samples, tableware and washing products at the school, and the results would be made public in a timely manner, the authorities said.
Until the investigation is concluded, meals at the school, which has about 400 pupils, will be the responsibility of the municipal education department.
As an added precaution, food safety inspections would be carried out at all elementary and middle schools in the region.
The prompt action by the authorities reflects the wide public attention in China to any food safety scandal which involves children.
The principal of an international school in Shanghai was dismissed in October after parents of students found mouldy tomatoes and onions in a kitchen where food was prepared for pupils. In May, video footage showing mouldy food in the canteen of a middle school in Chengdu, Sichuan province, triggered angry parents to stage protests outside the school and the local government building.
Police investigation reveals animal had escaped from a nearby restaurant
The escaped crocodile was captured by police officers and taken to the local station. Photo: Handout
A security guard at a beauty spot in eastern China was shocked to discover a 2-metre (6ft 6in) crocodile while on his rounds in the early hours of Monday morning.
The animal was lying motionless on a road at Xinlonghu Park in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, with its jaws tied by a strip of cloth, when it was spotted by the security guard, who immediately called the police, according to the Modern Express newspaper.
It took a number of officers to capture the crocodile and take it to the local police station, where an investigation revealed the animal had escaped from a nearby restaurant. The animal was returned and the restaurant owner was “criticised” by police, who urged that a close eye be kept on the animal, the report said.
“They bought it from a farm somewhere as a food material to attract customers. It has been killed for crocodile meat dishes,” an officer told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday.
Crocodiles were once vegetarians – but it was just a phase
Police said it was fortunate that the crocodile had been caught before it had entered the park’s lake or caused any danger to people.
It is unclear what species the crocodile belonged to but China permits the commercial breeding and use of the critically endangered Siamese crocodile, as well as saltwater and Nile crocodiles, which are listed as least concern species.
A staff member of the restaurant, called No. 1 Lakeside, told the Post stewed crocodile meat was on the menu for 168 yuan (US$23.60) a serving, while stewed crocodile claw was also available at 258 yuan.
Crocodile appears in ancient Chinese medicine books as a treatment for respiratory illnesses and the meat has long been regarded as a delicacy, especially in southern China, such as Guangdong province. Crocodile skin also remains a popular material for luxury handbags and other leather goods.
In June, another crocodile, measuring about 1.5 metres, was found in a road puddle during a heavy rain in Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei, where many restaurants have crocodile meat on their menus, the Chutian Metropolis Daily reported.
In that incident it took three officers to capture the animal which was sent to a wildlife centre where a physical check-up showed it had been bred in captivity, most likely for food.
Priority carriages on underground trains have not solved the problem of sexual harassment for female passengers
A woman is surrounded by men in a priority carriage on the Shenzhen metro. Photo: Sam Tsang
The first time Wanda was groped by a man on a Beijing bus she was a college student, travelling to school in her gym uniform on a summer’s day. Ten years – and numerous examples of sexual harassment on public transport – later, she is still haunted by the memory.
Now 31, Wanda – who asked to be identified only by her first name – remembers every detail of the incident. The bus was not crowded but the man, who appeared to be in his 40s, went straight over to stand uncomfortably close to her.
Then he pressed himself tightly against her and began making a thrusting motion with his lower body. Wanda said she froze, terrified by the encounter and unsure how to act. Just then, the bus took a sharp turn, the man was thrown aside and she quickly moved away.
“Afterwards, for a period, I looked at every adult man I saw as if he was aggressive,” she said.
Since then, Wanda said she had been flashed at in public and just last year was forced to block a man with her purse when he tried to touch her leg on a train.
118 Chinese men detained for groping women on subway trains
Wanda’s experience is not unusual but attempts to address the problem of sexual harassment on public transport in China have met with mixed results, as well as claims by feminists that they are restrictive to women.
Two major cities in southern China, for example, introduced priority carriages for women on their underground trains in 2017.
and Guangzhou, both in Guangdong province, established two designated carriages – one at each end of the train – during peak times.
The carriages are decorated with pink stickers which say, in Chinese and English, “priority carriages for women” and while men are not barred from using them
they are encouraged to leave them to women passengers.
While the authorities did not specifically say they were intended to prevent sexual harassment – saying only that the scheme was meant to “give more care and respect to women” – the carriages followed a precedent set by Japan and Europe for that reason.
Shenzhen is currently considering an update to its priority carriages with an amended law designating them for people with disabilities and minors, as well as women, and only during rush hour. Other passengers who do not meet these criteria can be asked to leave by rail staff.
A priority carriage for women on the Shenzhen underground system. Photo: Phoebe Zhang
But in reality the restrictions on the priority carriages are seldom enforced and they have been used by men since their launch. Furthermore, feminists say the scheme is a form of segregation, rather than an attempt to solve the cause of the issue.
One reason the priority carriages have failed in their purpose could be the size of the crowds using public transport each day. According to government data, there are roughly 5 million passenger trips on the Shenzhen underground every day and 8 million in Guangzhou.
It is also hard for staff to enforce the regulation.
“When it first came out, subway staff vehemently advocated for women to use it, so many people did,” said Zhang Ying, a piano teacher in Guangzhou. Staff would hold loud speakers and gesture for women to get on the priority carriages. But now, everybody just treats it like an ordinary carriage, she said.
Zhang said she rarely uses the priority carriages because of the inconvenience of having to walk all the way to the end of the train.
Women call for convenience in all areas, but [the government] only wants to draw you a little corner to play in.Xiao Meili, Guangzhou-based feminist
Feminists have opposed the scheme from the start.
“The logic behind the scheme is wrong to begin with,” said Xiao Meili, a Guangzhou-based feminist. “When noticing the dangers women face in public spaces, women call for convenience in all areas, but [the government] only wants to draw you a little corner to play in, signalling they still will neglect you in most places.”
Although it may appear well-intentioned, Xiao said the scheme was restricting women’s space.
“Most of the sexual harassers and rapists are men, so wouldn’t it be more effective to put these offenders in a limited space?” she asked.
In a survey of 443 people conducted by a group of feminists in Shenzhen in 2017, 42 per cent of women said they had been harassed on public transport, compared with just 6 per cent of men.
Most of the interviewees said they were dissatisfied with the police response and 65 per cent said they thought police should be most responsible for handling sexual harassment in public.
Six ways Japanese women can deter gropers on trains
Xiao and others have repeatedly written to government representatives about sexual harassment on public transport. In 2016, Xiao’s feminist group received 40,000 yuan (US$5,650) in public donations – just enough to buy an advertisement slot.
For two years, the group tried to put up anti-harassment billboards in the Guangzhou and Shenzhen underground systems, but they were repeatedly blocked by the authorities who said the advertisements would cause panic.
But in 2018 Xiao’s group spotted advertisements in the subways in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, some placed by news organisations and others by local governments. One advertisement in Chengdu, put up by rail officials, said: “There’s no groping hand here.”
Another, in Beijing, said: “Prevent sexual harassment, be vocal.”
Xiao said she was happy to see the changes, but described the current policy of updating the carriages in Shenzhen as an example of “lazy politics”.
There needed to be more than a pink bumper sticker on carriage windows, she said.
Instead, policymakers needed to think about the actual mechanisms of stopping harassment and how to handle culprits once they were caught.
“Women do not demand special care as if they are a soft and weak group,” Xiao said.
“They demand the safety they deserve and the right to travel conveniently.”
Expensive presents are officially discouraged but have become the norm at many schools on day of appreciation for educators
Students at Yangzhou Technical Vocational College form the Chinese characters for “Hello Teacher” to mark China’s Teachers’ Day. Photo: Handout
Despite a decade of official discouragement, parents in China have been struggling with one of the biggest dilemmas of the school year – how to mark the country’s annual Teacher’s Day.
Ellen Yuan agonised for a day and a night before sending her son off to kindergarten on Tuesday with a 1,000 yuan (US$140) gift card in his bag for the teacher.
It was the boy’s second week of attendance and Yuan had given no thought to any Teacher’s Day obligations –until she learned that several of her friends had been busy over the weekend preparing gifts for their children’s teachers.
“It makes me feel that I am being a drag on my son if I don’t do so,” said Yuan, who works for a foreign company in Shanghai.
Respecting teachers has traditionally been a fundamental social norm in China but gift giving on the special day for educators has gone beyond an expression of appreciation by their students, as parents have taken over with ever more expensive gifts – and sometimes cash – which they hope will mean their kids are well taken care of while at school.
What gift, how expensive it should be, and how to deliver it have become the biggest questions for many parents in the run-up to September 10 each year, even though the education ministry and its subordinate bodies have repeatedly issued directives over the past decade to ban teachers accepting gifts.
Yuan said one of her friends had bought a body care set worth more than 600 yuan for each of her child’s three teachers, another had bought an 800 yuan gift card, while a third had given the head teacher a 1,000 yuan bottle of perfume.
Some parents had delivered the presents directly to the school, while others had asked their children to take the gifts to their teachers. Yuan’s plan was to message the teacher and tell her to take the gift card from her son’s bag.
“I know it’s bad. I don’t want my kid to know that,” Yuan said.
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The question of whether parents should give gifts on Teacher’s Day was one of the hottest topics on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, attracting more than 15 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
“Of course we should not, but I don’t dare to ignore it,” one user said, winning more than 10,000 likes.
Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the gift-giving trend had been partly driven by a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.
“Everybody has given a gift. Would my child be specially treated if I don’t? This is a common concern,” Chu said. As a result, the purpose of gift giving on Teacher’s Day had become about protecting the children’s interests instead of a sincere expression of gratitude, he said.
But not every teacher gets presents – with gifts usually reserved for those teaching the “main subjects” of mathematics, Chinese and English, which count the most in high school and college entrance examinations.
Emily Shen, an English teacher from a middle school in Hangzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said she also prepared gifts for the teachers of her two kids. “Some chocolate for them to take to school. And I myself would give a gift card to each of those who teach the main subjects,” she said.
Zhuang Ke, a music teacher at a primary school in Jiaxing, also in Zhejiang province, admitted she was embarrassed by the parents’ different treatment of teachers of “less important” subjects like her’s. “It’s always nice to receive presents. But teachers who teach music, art and PE are often forgotten,” she said.
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State broadcaster CCTV said in a commentary on its website on Sunday that “all forms of behavior that attempt to ruin normal teaching order and interfere in equality by sending gifts should be resolutely abandoned”. A similar message was run by a series of official media outlets at local level.
“The most fundamental way to stop parents from sending gifts is to treat the students equally and fairly every day, so that parents conclude it makes no difference whether they give a gift,” Rednet.cn, the official news portal of Hunan province, said on Monday.
Although some teachers have made it explicit to students that they will refuse presents on Teacher’s Day, Yuan said her son’s teacher accepted the gift, as did the teachers of her three friends’ children.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Christmas in Beijing: Catholics attend mass on 24 December 2018
A bishop has been ordained with the blessing of both the Pope and the Chinese state for the first time under a new deal.
Religious organisations in China must be approved by the state, leading to a decades-long row with the Vatican.
But a deal was agreed last September, giving the Vatican a say in the bishops appointed by the state church.
Yao Shun received the papal mandate for his ordination as bishop in China’s Inner Mongolia region.
The country is home to about 12 million Catholics – split between the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and an underground church loyal to the Vatican.
For decades, members of the underground church have only recognised the authority of the pope, while members of the state church have refused it. The relationship between the Holy See and Beijing has been strained by the disagreement since the 1950s.
In practice, the Vatican has recognised many Chinese bishops over the years on an individual, informal basis, including several last year as part of the deal.
Media caption Father Dong Guanhua has been kicked out of the Chinese Catholic church for calling himself a bishop
The Vatican confirmed the new bishop’s ordination – referring to him as Antonio Yao Shun – as “the first to take place in the framework of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China”.
But the deal between the two remains controversial among some Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Zen from Hong Kong – where Chinese rules on state churches do not apply – accused the Vatican of “selling out” when details of the deal became clear in January 2018.
He said that the decision to reconcile with Beijing meant that retiring bishops of the underground church, faithful to Rome, would now be replaced by state-approved appointees.
Catholic news outlet Crux, meanwhile, reported that Bishop Shun had been chosen by the Vatican some time ago, before the agreement came into effect – and so his ordination is not a true test of the new mechanism.
But Bishop Shun’s ordination may be a notable moment in the reconciliation between the two countries.
In the past, Chinese state bishops were excommunicated from the Catholic Church for their role in ordaining new bishops outside of the papal mandate.
The relationship between China and the Vatican is further complicated by the Vatican’s diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers to be a breakaway province destined for reunification at some future date.
Cai Rui and Wu Chen are the proud parents of twins but they had to go abroad for the IVF treatment they needed to bring the children into the world
Wu Chen (far left) and Cai Rui (right) are raising their young family together in China. Photo: Cai Rui
When three-year-old twins Harry and Helen are asked about their dad, they have a set answer.
The children tell the curious that they do have a father but he lives in the United States.
Harry and Helen live on the outskirts of Kunming in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan with their two mothers, Cai Rui and Wu Chen.
Cai gave birth to the twins after being implanted at a US IVF clinic with ova from Wu and sperm from an American donor.
The couple were forced to seek treatment abroad because Chinese clinics will only perform IVF procedures on couples who can produce a marriage certificate – something limited to heterosexuals.
For Cai and Wu, it was a leap into the unknown – there was little information in China and few others had gone public about their experience.
But their biological clocks were ticking and the couple were used to taking difficult paths.
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Cai and Wu met while studying in Britain and registered their marriage there in 2014. Both women were in their thirties and soon began thinking about having children.
They looked forward to being mothers and felt the experience would strengthen their relationship even more, Cai said.
“I think it’s natural for a woman to aspire to be a mother once she turns 30,” she said. “We were both aware that the older a woman is, the harder it is for her to get pregnant. So it’s an immediate thing for us.”
Their parents were also worried about the couple’s welfare as they grew older.
“Our parents have accepted our relationship, thinking it’s our own choice. However, they worried that when we are old, there will be no children to look after us,” Cai said.
Wu Chen (left) and Cai Rui (right) brought their twin children Helen and Harry into the world with help from IVF treatment in the United States. Photo: Cai Rui
The couple embarked on two rounds of IVF in London, with Cai impregnated with Wu’s fertilised ova, but both rounds failed.
They then returned to China and searched for other options but at the time there were few posts by Chinese lesbians sharing their experience of having babies abroad, Cai said.
So they contacted three clinics in the US and finally decided to go through one in Portland, Oregon, in large part because of the city’s gay-friendly reputation.
Cai said that when it came time to choose a sperm donor, they were less concerned about his outward appearance and more focused on his physical and mental health, his academic record and his experience growing up.
“We wanted to make sure our baby’s father was a healthy and interesting guy,” she said.
The couple chose the sperm of a white man and implanted two fertilised eggs into Cai’s body to raise the chances of success. Twelve weeks later, the couple flew back to Beijing where Harry and Helen were born on April 1, 2016.
Thanks to a more relaxed population policy since 2016, Cai was able to register the children as a single mother while the children were given her partner’s surname.
“So my lover is their biological mother and I am their birth mother,” Cai said.
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The family lived in Beijing for about a year before moving to Yunnan for work commitments. Cai said there had not been any big problems raising the children there apart from some annoying questions from neighbours about why the children are biracial and why the father is not in the home.
“These questions are like flies around us. But they’re not a big deal and won’t affect our life,” she said.
She said she told various villagers in their community about the children’s conception and they responded by saying, “What an advanced lifestyle you have!”
Twins Harry and Helen celebrate Lunar New Year. Photo: Cai Rui
The couple have also tried to explain the situation to the twins.
“We instilled diverse family values in them from a very young age, through everything including cartoon books they read and stories we made up by ourselves,” Cai said.
“So we told [them] that you have a father. But the reason for forming a family is love. We don’t have love with your father, so he doesn’t live with us.”
About four years ago the couple opened a public account on social media app WeChat called Rainbow Babies, to share their experience with other lesbians on the mainland. Cai said the account had more than 17,000 followers, many responding by relating their own stories about IVF.
One woman wrote on the platform that she and her partner had been together for 10 years and after having a daughter they were pregnant with a boy.
“I am not confident of us lesbians raising a boy. Do you have any tips to share with us?” the woman wrote.
Why China’s gays and lesbians are still stuck in the closet
Another woman wrote that since she and her partner decided to have a baby, they had confronted obstacles at every step in the process, but the biggest benefit was that “after so many hardships, our love has been consolidated and we have cherished each other more than before”.
Cai said the most popular destinations for mainland lesbians seeking IVF treatment were the US, Thailand and Cambodia, with at least 1,000 either pregnant or having given birth.
“Some people are hesitant to have babies because of social pressure. [But] as times goes by and women get older, the possibility of them getting pregnant becomes lower,” Cai said.
Cai said she and Wu were often praised for their courage but they were in the habit of choosing a tougher road.
“On many occasions, this habit is the most reliable way to push us to keep our innocent heart and to do things to be ourselves,” she said.
More than one billion views of Mulan discussion in China hours after trailer screens during Women’s World Cup final
While some quibble over technical details, the vast majority are eagerly awaiting Disney’s first Chinese princess
Crystal Liu Yifei as Mulan in Disney’s live-action film which is eagerly anticipated in China.
Anticipation over Disney’s live-action movie Mulan is running high in China, with more than one billion views of the subject on Chinese social media in the hours after a teaser trailer was unveiled during Sunday’s final game of the Women’s World Cup.
While some online commenters had their doubts over technical details, most internet users appeared exhilarated at the prospect of Disney’s first Chinese princess, played by Chinese-American actress Crystal Liu Yifei.
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By Monday afternoon, the hashtag Hua Mulan had been viewed more than one billion times on the Twitter-like Weibo service and nearly 770,000 comments had been made on the topic. Some 450 million views had been recorded for the topics “Mushu no longer in the movie Mulan” – a reference to the heroine’s fast-talking dragon companion in the 1998 animation – and “the look of Liu Yifei”.
“I got carried away by the fighting scenes. Mulan is courageous and strong. I look forward to seeing the eastern heroine Hua Mulan going global,” said one Weibo user.
“This is the first Chinese Disney princess. It’s so great and we feel so proud,” said another.
The movie, scheduled for release on March 27 next year, casts renowned action star Jet Li as the emperor who ordered the military draft to fight a northern invasion, and internationally-acclaimed actress Gong Li as a powerful witch. Donnie Yen Ji-dan, star of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the Ip Man movies, plays Mulan’s martial arts mentor Commander Tung.
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Mulan tells the story of a fabled Chinese heroine who posed as a man and became one of the greatest warriors of her time, arguably in the Northern Wei period, or about AD400 to 600. She is one China’s best known fictional characters, with numerous theatrical references and poems which many Chinese know by heart.
The familiarity of the tale has presented a challenge for the production, with many Chinese online commenters questioning the historical details which can be discerned from the sketchy details provided by the trailer.
Many took exception to the opening scene of Mulan riding a horse to her home, built in the architectural style of tulou, common in the southern province of Fujian, when the legend places the heroine in the north.
“The poem said Mulan bade farewell to her parents in the morning and slept near the Yellow River at night. How can she live in a tulou in Fujian? Did she take a fast-rail train?” one internet user teased.
Another used the example to call for Disney to pay more attention to technical details when telling Chinese stories. “Please don’t be arrogant about Chinese stories.”
Also questioned in China was the message from the trailer that Mulan had become a warrior to escape a forced marriage, rather than the well known detail that she was saving her father from being drafted into the military in an act of filial piety.
But the overwhelming response was that fans should put aside their own perceptions of Mulan and celebrate the new edition as one of the few fully-Asian cast international movies, as well as its depiction of a powerful woman and Chinese values as “the only Disney princess who was not saved by a prince but instead became a fighting warrior”.
“Can our domestically produced period dramas meet the standard if we are here to be picky about looks and architecture? Even domestic directors can’t be perfect in restoring ancient costumes, make-up or architecture. Why should we ask so much from a foreign one? We should celebrate the cultural exchange rather than splitting hairs to find faults,” said one Weibo user.
“Mulan in the battlefield has outperformed men and showcased the traditional values of courage and protecting the country when needed. Chinese values, presented to the world by Chinese actors, is worth looking forward to. Please throw away the technical faults such as architecture,” said another.
Annual tests still an academic pressure cooker for students wanting to get into the nation’s top universities, despite efforts to change the system
The gruelling exam is the sole criteria for admission to university in China
After months of study, China’s high school students are about to be put to the test in the annual “university entrance examinations which begin on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE
For the past six months, the life of 18-year-old Shanghai student Xiao Qing has revolved around preparation for one of China’s annual rites of passage.
Every day at school, from 7.20am to 5.30pm, the final-year secondary school student in Changning district has studied previous test papers for the gaokao, officially known as the National Higher Education Entrance Examination.
“Sometimes I feel my bottom hurts from sitting for so many hours,” she said. “We feel like we are test machines.”
Xiao Qing will put all of that preparation to the real test from Friday, when over two to three days she will be among more than 10 million people trying to qualify for one of the spots at a Chinese university.
Most students get just one shot at the gaokao, the sole criteria for admission to university in China. It’s a gruelling process that has been criticised over the years as too focused on rote learning, putting too much pressure on students and privileging applicants living near the best universities.
Education authorities have gone some way to try to address these problems. In 2014, the Ministry of Education started letting students choose half of their subjects to introduce some flexibility into the system.
Apart from the compulsory subjects of Chinese, mathematics and English, students are now supposed to be able to choose any three of six other subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, politics, history and geography.
Previously, secondary school students had been split strictly into liberal arts or science majors in a system that was introduced in 1952 and revived in 1977 after being suspended during the Cultural Revolution.
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Wen Dongmao, a professor from Peking University’s Graduate School of Education, said the changes expanded the opportunity for students to follow their interests.
“The new gaokao gives students plenty of choices of subjects to learn and to be evaluated on. I think people should choose which subject to learn based on what they are interested in,” Wen said.
“Gaokao reform is designed according to some methods by overseas universities, like American and Hong Kong schools. Its direction is right, but there will be inevitable problems brought by it.”
One of the problems is the uneven implementation of the changes throughout the country, with just 14 of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions having introduced them.
In the eastern province of Anhui, for example, the reforms were supposed to go in effect from September last year but were postponed without reason, news portal Caixin.com reported.
The report quoted a teacher from Hefei No 1 Middle School in the provincial capital as saying the school was not ready for the changes.
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“Shanghai and Zhejiang are economically advanced and we are not at that level,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s a big challenge for us to manage so many students’ choices of gaokao subjects.”
In neighbouring Jiangxi province, a high school history teacher said many places opposed the reform mainly “because of the shortage of resources”.
“It’s hard to roll out gaokao reform because we don’t have enough teachers or classrooms to handle the students’ various choices of subjects. Students can choose three out of six courses and that means there are 20 potential combinations,” the teacher was quoted as saying.
Chinese high school students study late into the night for the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. Photo: EPA-EFE
In addition, the system allows students to take the tests in more than one year and submit the highest scores when applying to universities.
“I heard from teachers in other provinces that students will take the tests of the selected subjects again and again for fear that other students will overtake them. That’s exhausting and will just put more burden on the students,” the Jiangxi teacher said.
He also said the gaokao process put extra pressure on teachers who feared the tests would push students to extremes. One of his students contemplated jumping from a bridge after she thought she had done poorly in the Chinese section of the exam.
“She called me, saying she felt it was the end of the world. I was shocked and hurried to the bridge,” he was quoted as saying. He spoke to her for more than an hour about before the girl came down, going on to get a decent score.
Critics also say the system is weighted in favour of students in bigger cities such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, home to the country’s top universities.
China private education industry is booming despite economic slowdown
Li Tao, an academic from the China Rural Development Institute at Northeast China Normal University in Changchun, Jilin province, said about 20-25 per cent of gaokao candidates from Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai were admitted to China’s elite universities, compared with just 5 or 6 per cent in places like Sichuan, Henan and Guangdong.
Li said that was because the top universities were funded by local governments and gave preference to applicants from those areas.
“To make it fairer, the Ministry of Education has insisted over the years that elite universities cannot have more than 30 per cent of incoming students from the area in which it is located,” he said.
Despite these challenges, gaokao was still a “fair” way to get admitted to university in China, Li said.
“Gaokao is the fairest channel to screen applicants on such a large scale, to my knowledge,” he said. “It does not check your family background and every student does the same test paper [if they are from the same region]. Its score is the only factor in evaluating a university applicant.”
The ‘success’ of China’s undemocratic model hides the continued exploitation of the poor, the destruction of faith communities and other victims who can’t speak out
Villagers of the Yi ethnic group move into new houses for relocated residents from poor areas, in Zhaojue county in southwest China’s Sichuan province. Under President Xi Jinping, China has set the goal of eliminating poverty by 2020, but the state of the rural poor in remote counties may make the task difficult. Photo: Xinhua
I write to respond to Randy Lee’s letter, dated May 6, on the dilemma of democracy and prosperity in mainland China and Taiwan (“
”). Linear thinking of this kind has misled a lot of people on the issue.
Mr Lee compared the economies of China and Taiwan, saying the island’s economy is in a downturn and attributed this to its democratic governance. However, every nation faces regular ups and downs in its economy and there is no reason to place the blame on the so-called chaos of democracy.
The strong economy of China at present comes at a price, and the price is most likely paid by the individual citizens deprived of freedom of speech, businesses cultivating a “copying” culture to make a profit, as well as the
in the People’s Republic of China, so let’s not forget whole impoverished counties in the mainland. It is reported that the richest 100 individuals in China have more wealth than the poorest two-fifths of the country’s population combined. What does that mean? That such an economy and authoritarian government do not guarantee a more equally prosperous nation, but keep widening the gap between the poor and the rich, and even exploiting the poorest parts of the country. The image of a prosperous nation, as described by Mr Lee, is only an illusion – hiding its failure in protecting the poor from being exploited and ignored.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Chinese parents struggle with Teacher’s Day gift etiquette
Despite a decade of official discouragement, parents in China have been struggling with one of the biggest dilemmas of the school year – how to mark the country’s annual Teacher’s Day.
Ellen Yuan agonised for a day and a night before sending her son off to kindergarten on Tuesday with a 1,000 yuan (US$140) gift card in his bag for the teacher.
It was the boy’s second week of attendance and Yuan had given no thought to any Teacher’s Day obligations –until she learned that several of her friends had been busy over the weekend preparing gifts for their children’s teachers.
“It makes me feel that I am being a drag on my son if I don’t do so,” said Yuan, who works for a foreign company in Shanghai.
Respecting teachers has traditionally been a fundamental social norm in China but gift giving on the special day for educators has gone beyond an expression of appreciation by their students, as parents have taken over with ever more expensive gifts – and sometimes cash – which they hope will mean their kids are well taken care of while at school.
What gift, how expensive it should be, and how to deliver it have become the biggest questions for many parents in the run-up to September 10 each year, even though the education ministry and its subordinate bodies have repeatedly issued directives over the past decade to ban teachers accepting gifts.
Yuan said one of her friends had bought a body care set worth more than 600 yuan for each of her child’s three teachers, another had bought an 800 yuan gift card, while a third had given the head teacher a 1,000 yuan bottle of perfume.
Some parents had delivered the presents directly to the school, while others had asked their children to take the gifts to their teachers. Yuan’s plan was to message the teacher and tell her to take the gift card from her son’s bag.
“I know it’s bad. I don’t want my kid to know that,” Yuan said.
But not every teacher gets presents – with gifts usually reserved for those teaching the “main subjects” of mathematics, Chinese and English, which count the most in high school and college entrance examinations.
Emily Shen, an English teacher from a middle school in Hangzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said she also prepared gifts for the teachers of her two kids. “Some chocolate for them to take to school. And I myself would give a gift card to each of those who teach the main subjects,” she said.
Zhuang Ke, a music teacher at a primary school in Jiaxing, also in Zhejiang province, admitted she was embarrassed by the parents’ different treatment of teachers of “less important” subjects like her’s. “It’s always nice to receive presents. But teachers who teach music, art and PE are often forgotten,” she said.
Chinese kindergarten teacher fired for hot sun punishment
State broadcaster CCTV said in a commentary on its website on Sunday that “all forms of behavior that attempt to ruin normal teaching order and interfere in equality by sending gifts should be resolutely abandoned”. A similar message was run by a series of official media outlets at local level.
“The most fundamental way to stop parents from sending gifts is to treat the students equally and fairly every day, so that parents conclude it makes no difference whether they give a gift,” Rednet.cn, the official news portal of Hunan province, said on Monday.
Although some teachers have made it explicit to students that they will refuse presents on Teacher’s Day, Yuan said her son’s teacher accepted the gift, as did the teachers of her three friends’ children.
Source: SCMP
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