On Monday, I introduced Principal Wang Zheng, who took over at Shenzhen Middle School in April 2002. Underlying all of Principal Wang’s reforms were several assumptions that would seem correct to Westerners but too visionary to Chinese. First and foremost, Principal Wang believed that the national examination was a test that students could cram for in one year instead of three years. In other words, preparation for the national examination was a distinct and separate project from education. That’s why he instituted a system whereby students would for the first two years learn to understand choice and responsibility in order to become productive citizens; for their final year they would be isolated in the school’s western campus so that they could cram for the national examination.

This was in itself controversial, but what truly outraged parents, teachers, and government officials was that Principal Wang recognized his limitations as an educator. Having been an educator all his life he understood that there were going to be intelligent students who wouldn’t need to study that much,much less intelligent students who were going to flunk the national examination no matter how hard they studied, students obsessed with testing for Peking,students who wanted to work for Goldman Sachs and students who were happy being bartenders. His greatest achievement, his legacy, and ultimately his undoing was that he accepted the individuality and diversity of the student pool, and permitted students to decide their own destiny.

Unsurprisingly, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to China has so far been dominated by talks with Chinese officials over the sinking of a South Korean warship, an act presumed to have been carried out by North Korea.

Assuming conspiracy theories such as those outlined by Japanese writer Tanaka Sakai, who suggested that the Cheonan may have been sunk by ‘friendly’ US fire rather than a North Korean torpedo, are wide of the mark (and this version of events was itself seemingly torpedoed when a US submarine Sakai said may also have been sunk turned up in Hawaii) China won’t be amused by its Communist brethren’s actions.

China is generally seen as the only country with anything approaching influence over the Hermit Kingdom, and it will (or certainly should have) been thankful for South Korea’s measured response—South Korean officials were restrained following the March 26 sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, downplaying speculation Pyongyang was responsible and initially suggesting it was a North Korean mine left over from the two countries’ conflict.

But after a joint, multi-country investigation found what it described as ‘overwhelming’ evidence that North Korea was indeed responsible, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had little choice but to announce a tough response, suspending trade and demanding an apology. Lee also said that South Korea would refer the matter to the UN Security Council, a move that puts permanent member China in the spotlight.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is scheduled to visit Seoul on Friday for talks with Lee, but Chinese Foreign Ministry officials have reportedly urged ‘calmness and restraint’. Presumably they’d acknowledge that the South’s response has, until now, demonstrated exactly that (although it has now resumed ‘psychological warfare’ in the form of loudspeaker broadcasts that have been on hold for the past six years).

Beijing has no interest in conflict or a North Korean collapse, so its caution is understandable. But Wen will also need to ask himself how Beijing would respond to the inevitable domestic pressure that would follow in the event of a similar incident occurring with a Chinese vessel.

The pressure to respond would be enormous, as the reaction to the accidental bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 demonstrates. Back then, China's ambassador to the United Nations described ‘NATO's barbarian act’ as ‘a gross violation of the United Nations charter, international law and the norms governing international relations’ and tens of thousands of Chinese took to the streets in sometimes violent protests. Meanwhile, apologies by Bill Clinton and US officials were initially not allowed to be broadcast by state media.

Not exactly in the interests of calmness or restraint.
 

Shenzhen municipality in south China’s Guangdong Province formally announced the appointment of Wang Zheng as principal of its flagship public high school in April, 2002. Shenzhen’s mayor himself flew to Beijing to invite Peking University High School’s vice principal to take up this position, and Wang Zheng’s appointment was seen as a triumph and coup d’état for a booming metropolis less renowned for its schools and culture than for its sweatshop factories and foot massage parlours.

Wang Zheng and Shenzhen at first seemed like an odd couple: the former was the scion of a distinguished Beijing family of educators, and the latter a fishing village plucked from obscurity by Deng Xiaoping’s decision in the late 1970s to test the free market in four special economic zones. But both shared an irrepressible and irreversible belief in reform.　

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Another week and, sadly it seems, another multiple stabbing in China. The latest incident came in southern China, where a number of knife-wielding men reportedly broke into a vocational school dormitory and started slashing at students.

In this latest case, the attack seems to have been prompted by something specific (an earlier dispute at a barbecue stall). But it comes after a string of attacks since March on educational facilities that have claimed, according to Reuters, 27 lives, while dozens more have been injured.

One of the most immediate concerns for the government has been how much media coverage to allow of the attacks, with the Propaganda Department ordering that coverage be kept off the front pages of domestic newspapers, with reports to follow the official Xinhua News Agency’s lead. The government defends the restrictions by arguing that allowing front page coverage only inspires copycat crimes (and the earlier attacks were certainly eerily similar, with everyday household objects such as kitchen knives and cleavers being used on small children).

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There’s an old joke that goes like this:  seven Chinese walk into a room, and ten political parties come out.  Everyone says that Chinese are terrible managers, and an ordinary Chinese office will have more political drama than Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Clinton household combined.  Western managers know that Chinese have issues co-operating, and have spent tens of millions of dollars in corporate training to attempt to rectify this issue.  But unlike the problem of process, co-operation is much harder to instil in Chinese because of a fundamental failing in China’s high schools.   

Consider the life of an American high school student.  He may play on a sports team, participate in student council, volunteer, date, and work part-time at McDonald’s.  School can be a popularity contest, a jungle, a prison or just a nuisance, depending on your social designation.  Teachers and parents, meanwhile, have resigned themselves to their minimal influence over these stubborn and rebellious teenagers, and will just seek to prevent pregnancies and drug abuse.  The teenage years are an endless drama:  fights with parents over curfew, acne, not making the football team or cheerleading squad, break-ups, depression, anorexia, Waiting for Godot anxiety, the prom.

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Taking up where I left off yesterday on the shortcomings of the national examination system, it's clear to me that, as Marxists would like to say, Chinese suffer from ‘false consciousness.’ They honestly believe, despite all the scientific, empirical, and anecdotal evidence to the contrary, that China’s high schools provide the best education in the world. Moreover, in a society overflowing with corruption and dishonesty and injustice, Chinese believe that the national examination system is fair and honest and just, and represents the best and only chance of an ordinary child improving his lot in life.

Chinese know that even the lotteries and the equity markets are rigged in favour of the rich and powerful, so why would they believe that the national examination system is incorruptible? People write these tests, and these same people have sons and daughters, family and friends, patrons and superiors—and in China guanxi rules. And if the rich and powerful can strip state assets, gamble with public funds, and monopolize entire industries I’d think they can easily get national examination questions and answers. When it comes to the national examination, Chinese suffer from a national self-delusion.

This self-delusion is borne out of self-interest and pride. Chinese may resent the system, but they believe the costs of not conforming are too high: failure to get into university means political, social, and economic marginalization. If there’s a 50 percent chance a fresh university graduate cannot find employment then there’s a 100 percent chance that a non-university degree holder cannot. There’s also the face issue: all parents talk about with friends and colleagues is their child’s schooling and university prospects. If a child fails to get into university the parents lose face among friends, family, and colleagues, and that would be like death to them. In education, like in most other areas, herd mentality trumps all.

But this doesn’t explain how a system that actively encourages individual and amoral competition can prevent itself from implosion. The answer lies in the specific organizational structure of the Chinese education system, a structure borne out of the Chinese Communist Party’s roots and which is mirrored and copied throughout Chinese society. In this organization structure one type of individual is ultimately responsible for stability, conformity, and orthodoxy in the system: the head teacher I discussed this week.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes another trip to Asia this month, with stops in Japan and South Korea sandwiching the main reason for the visit—the annual US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

The meetings were introduced last year, and offer a high-level forum for discussing a range of issues affecting the two countries. This year’s meeting takes place in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, and it seems inevitable that the issue of China’s currency (the dialogue includes the US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) and the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran will feature high on the agenda.

One thing that will be interesting to see is whether Clinton broaches the issue of human rights. Clinton provoked some outrage back home after she said on her trip to the region last February that issues such as human rights couldn’t interfere with handling of the economic crisis, tackling climate change and security issues.

A strong critic of this stance is Christian Whiton, a former US State Department official and now a principal at DC Asia Advisory, who told me not long after Clinton’s visit that he felt the failure to press these issues represented a lack of strategic vision on the part of the Obama administration.

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China’s national examination system, in which students’ aggregate score in six subjects over three days of examinations determine their university placement, is both brilliantly simple and devastatingly effective. China’s entire education system revolves around the national examination, which tests students’ ability to memorize and regurgitate, and willingness to recite orthodoxy. All schooling, from kindergarten onwards, is a prelude to that climactic meeting with destiny, and afterwards students forget what they’ve memorized, and cruise through university playing video games.

This system has made Chinese students literate and knowledgeable, but it also has also too many times made them incompetent and stupid. Let me emphasize this: the people best known for their respect for education and love of knowledge have constructed an education system that makes Chinese students, the very same hardworking and brilliant students who dominate international mathematics competitions and science laboratories, incompetent and stupid.

A senior three classroom in an elite Chinese high school is like Wonderland in the Orwellian year of 1984. From seven in the morning until midnight, in a sterile and dim room, fifty students slump over and memorize the textbooks piled thickly on top of their desks. They look sullen and defeated, but rallying them are red banners, flying from the white dilapidated walls, with the slogans ‘Impossible is Nothing’ and ‘Fight Together in the War for Our Future.’ Above the front blackboard there’s a Chinese flag as well a countdown to the national examination in June: 155 days.

I’ve often talked to students in their final year of high school, and each time, even though everyone just repeats the same message, I still can’t believe my ears. I’m expecting them to tell me how depressed and angry they are, and how all this memorization is crushing and pointless. I’m expecting them to tell me they’d prefer a more sane, humane, and just system of selecting students for China’s top universities—like drawing names randomly out of a box. I’m expecting them to tell me how much they hate their parents and teachers for mutilating their individuality and creativity like this. I’m expecting them to tell me that they hate their classmates, and plan to poison their high-achieving roommate.

So, what exactly does China have planned for health care reform? As I mentioned ahead of this series on health care, which concludes today, the government last January passed a far-reaching medical reform plan pledging 850 billion yuan ($123 billion) by 2011 to help provide universal (well, 90 percent of the population) primary medical insurance coverage.

I asked Drew Thompson, Director of China Studies and Starr Senior Fellow at The Nixon Center in Washington, D.C., how serious the situation was facing the health care system in China, and the extent to which he felt reform was necessary.

He told me:

‘The Chinese health care system has not fared well since the system underwent a privatization process beginning in the mid-1980s. At the same time that government funding was being reduced, insurance coverage rates were dropping as well, so the system was underfunded and hospitals had to rely too heavily on fee-for-services without sufficient oversight, resulting in rampant over-prescription and often, outright corruption.’

Meanwhile, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, individual spending on health care jumped from 21 percent in 1980 to 45 percent in 2007; over the same period, government funding fell from 36 percent to 20 percent.