

A Chinese Education, for a Price - slaven
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/world/asia/in-china-schools-a-culture-of-bribery-spreads.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Shenglong
This kind of thing doesn't just happen in education, and it's difficult to say
how to really stop it. For example:

My aunt had surgery about a year ago, and our family paid out quite a bit of
money to everyone involved in her surgery. On top of the normal fees, we gave
the surgeon, first assist, second assist, anesthesiologist, and even the
secretary large sums of money.

When my mother told me about this, I was shocked. "Why?" I asked. You'll have
to understand that my family in China, while well off, has never participated
in the cycles of alleged corruption. In fact, my uncle rejects so many bribes
(gifts from business interactions) to the point that people have started
leaving gifts anonymously at my grandmother's door.

Yet, this wasn't about getting ahead in life. My mother told me, "we just want
to make sure they have an incentive to do the best job they can." Honestly, I
don't blame her. We didn't pay to skip a line, and we didn't pay for any
organs (not that type of surgery anyway). We paid the people involved because
we felt it would inspire them to do a better job.

Is that wrong? Maybe. I don't really know anymore.

~~~
Cieplak
_Tipping, for example, is considered bribery in some societies, while in
others the two concepts may not be interchangeable._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery>

~~~
derleth
> Tipping, for example, is considered bribery in some societies, while in
> others the two concepts may not be interchangeable.

To clarify for our non-American readers: In the USA, and possibly Canada as
well, waitstaff in restaurants are typically not paid a living wage (that is,
they're paid even less than minimum wage, which isn't a living wage by itself
anymore either) because both restaurants and the law expect them to make it up
in tips. In some restaurants, the menu will say that an automatic gratuity
(that is, a tip) of some specified percentage is added to the bill of parties
of eight or more people. Typically, tips range from 15%-20% of the total bill,
but there's no law governing how much people actually give.

 _Merely bringing this up in the wrong crowd will reliably generate a massive
argument._ So, uh, keep that in mind, too.

------
tokenadult
I first lived in Taiwan under its former dictatorial regime. Even then, when
the late Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo was president, the people of
Taiwan were very proud of the incorruptibility of their university entrance
system. They pointed out to me that Chiang Ching-kuo's son was not able to get
into university. The university entrance exams there, then and now, are like
taking a battery of multiple AP-level or IB-level tests over just a couple
days in July. Students were strictly rank-ordered by their scores, and
students rank-ordered their choices of university departments. Then a matching
algorithm paired students and schools. (There are other details I am omitting
here for simplicity.)

The stringency and fairness of the university entrance system in Taiwan seemed
to drive a lot of quality in curriculum standards and instruction in secondary
schooling in Taiwan. (In those days, compulsory, taxpayer-subsidized schooling
for all was provided through ninth grade. Many students went on to three
grades of senior high after taking entrance exams for senior high schools. The
best and most desired senior high schools were free to attend, having taxpayer
subsidies, but of course were hard to get into.)

In most countries, over time, democratization leads to ever-greater provision
of higher education places, with ever-greater public subsidies. Today, the
best universities in Taiwan still enroll very well prepared students, who take
many of the core subjects using the same English-language textbooks used at
the better univerisities in the States. Some of the lesser universities in
Taiwan are barely above the level of typical colleges in the United States,
but in general there is still good quality of secondary education there.
Selection to higher levels of schooling that is based on achievement at
earlier levels of schooling, rather than based on bribes or connections, makes
a whole country better off.

~~~
potatolicious
The situation in Taiwan isn't _quite_ that rosy I don't think.

The result of the examination system (which, FWIW, is not unique to Taiwan) is
that high school kids routinely spend 12+ hours each day schooling. When
they're not at public school, they're at private cram schools, and success in
the exams certainly haven't been democratized for those who cannot afford the
extra, private help to get ahead.

So sure, it isn't corrupt, but the integrity of the examination system doesn't
mean egalitarianism, not by a long shot.

~~~
guylhem
Egalitarianism is never a goal.

A fair competition however is.

The best will rise up - working 12 hours a day if needed. How is that a bad
thing?

------
pg
It's ironic that China was in 587 the first to introduce competitive
examinations for government positions.

~~~
varjag
Any distribution system where human examiner is involved is prone to
corruption. Doubt it worked that smooth back then either.

~~~
kinghajj
It's worse than that, the exams were pointless because they only tested
knowledge of Confucianism.

~~~
continuations
That's not any different from today's liberal arts degrees, which have nothing
to do with the careers most people end up going into.

~~~
wisty
The difference being the Confucianists got jobs which they didn't deserve.

~~~
dietrichepp
I know you're trying to say that testing for Confucianism is not the same as
testing for how well you can do a government post, but these weren't worthless
tests.

1) Passing old Chinese tests required literacy, something we want bureaucrats
to have. This is a big chunk of what liberal arts degrees are about.
(Calligraphy, too, was included in the test.)

2) Studying Confucianism meant that you at least had to think and respond
about moral and ethical matters. Again, I'd rather have a bureaucrat who has
thought about morality and ethics than one who hasn't. And according to
Wikipedia,

> The core of Confucianism is humanism, the belief that human beings are
> teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal
> endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation.

3) People with liberal arts degrees quite often take posts that are entirely
unrelated to their field of study.

Saying that "Confucianists got jobs which they didn't deserve" is just a
pathetic jab at Chinese culture.

------
notaddicted
I predict that education will continue to be a huge political and economic
battleground globally for the foreseeable future. There are so many reasons:

1\. Convention and desire for free and equal access to basic education is one
of the cornerstones of the meritocracy, which prevents a purely economic
solution. Even at the university level the government gives lenders extra
recourse and the schools themselves provide aid.

2\. Credentialism: access to well known schools is highly prized and self
perpetuating. Even if a new school has an excellent staff it could take
decades for graduates to go out in the world and make the school's reputation.

3\. Access to peers: beyond pure credentialism and instructor quality is the
caliber of the fellow students that can make a big difference.

4\. GPA inflation. The students constantly try to exert pressure on the
instructor to raise GPA. If the instructor gives in what happens is
effectively GPA socialism ... if many students have a high GPA the true top
students are no longer easily distinguished by GPA. Admissions officers then
track the students' performance and incoming GPA versus their originating
school ... a high GPA from that school is then worth less.

~~~
chollida1
> Admissions officers then track the students' performance and incoming GPA
> versus their originating school ... a high GPA from that school is then
> worth less.

This already happens.

Waterloo University in Canada, recognized as one of the worlds top CS and
Engineering Universities, has admitted tracking grades from each incoming high
school and then comparing them to what each student gets at University.

My admissions person admitted this to me in 2000.

It's been going on for a while:)

~~~
cperciva
Almost all Ontario universities are doing this now. They share data too.

------
GabrielF00
The Chinese education system unfortunately seems to promote dishonesty to
children. Plagiarism is endemic and sometimes students are taught to
plagiarize. There may be a decent reason - they think kids should model
successful thinkers rather than come up with half-baked ideas themselves - but
the result is that they are teaching kids to be dishonest. A classmate of mine
from China turned in a rough draft of a paper that was copied from somewhere.
The university gave her a standard punishment - she was forced to withdraw
from the class and they put a "required to withdraw" mark on her transcript.
She was unwilling to accept that she had done anything wrong and insisted that
even though the teacher told her not to plagiarize they didn't tell her that
she couldn't turn in a rough draft that had been copied.

I've read that this dates back to the Chinese civil service exam system which
is ancient by Western standards and has a long tradition of people coming up
with clever ways to cheat.

~~~
tsotha
The ancient Chinese civil service exam was, at least in part, designed to weed
out independent thinkers - that's just not a valued commodity in a society
based on Confucianism. So it doesn't surprise me plagiarism isn't viewed as a
particularly serious offense even today.

------
guylhem
That is very sad and concerning.

In my libertarian opinion, the competition start when the participants can
make an informed choice - ie when they have a basic education.

Basic education, teaching everyone to read and count, provides positive
externalities too- so it's generally regarded as a good thing, and many
government provide public basic education. (some push that even further, but
let's not talk about that yet)

An alternative is having companies providing basic education, and students
enrolling with vouchers - ie opening competition on the education service
market while fixing demand, to keep the positive externality. It is even
better than the former option.

But biasing the competition even before it is started, by having a single
government-run education scheme, where bribery and cronyism replace healthy
competition is so wrong!

~~~
dsr_
A true libertarian must pay for all education. Vouchers? Vouchers are
socialism. Pay in cash or whatever arrangements are mutually acceptable to
both sides. The government's only acceptable role is to guarantee the
execution of contracts. The market will guarantee efficiency!

~~~
guylhem
I agree with everything but your first phrase - a 5 years old kids can't pay
for his education and can't enter in a legally binding contract. This breaks
that line of thought.

Is that a collectivist troll?

In that event, let me warm your heart: your reasoning hold perfectly well if
you replace education by healthcare.

------
ilaksh
My theory is that the reason there are much higher levels of corruption in
places like China, Mexico and other countries versus the US is because their
so-called "economies" are even more broken and unequal than ours.

The United States GNI at PPP (gross national income at purchasing power
parity) is $48,890 whereas Mexico's is $15,120 and China's is $8,430.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

So if corruption is related to relative GNI at PPP (obviously that isn't the
only factor, but I think it is likely to be a significant one) then we can
expect problems related to corruption to be about 3 times as bad in Mexico as
they are in the US. Similarly we would expect China's problems to be about 6
times as bad.

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gawker
I'm interested to know how this compares to private/Ivy League schools. It
seems to me that you would also have a price to pay in order to gain access to
top education although certainly, in the Chinese case, it's more extreme since
there are so many students vying for the same few spots at top universities
that everyone is trying to gain some sort of edge.

------
kumarm
We had similar issue in South India growing up. In my home where Christian
Missionary schools were the popular schools when I was growing up, used to
collect huge funds as donations (Though they are forced).

Over the years, many Private non church based schools got started with better
standards (Since there was money to be made). Most of the schools that were
doing well in my generation are now closed or on their death bed.

Its purely supply and demand. If schools can demand huge donations, it matter
of time before more & better schools get started increasing the supply.

India is a generation ahead of China in Corruption (Sad but true).

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BogdanMm
Communism, everybody is equal but some are more equal than others...

~~~
yen223
To be fair, ever since China was inducted into the WTO, they have abandoned
any pretense of running a communist system.

Their government now seems to have taken the worst parts of capitalism, and
mixed it with the worst parts of socialism.

------
tnuc
Prices looks similar to the US system.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Surely you are trolling.

~~~
revelation
Even if its not downright corruption, there is a price for a good education in
western countries, too. Highly educated parents will want a good education for
their kids, they will move to where that can be had. Since high education is
strongly correlated with high income, gentrification sets in, pushing out
lower-income households.

And thats just up to high-school; it's very clear that money can get you into
any university, merits or not.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Granted, but the USA still has vastly more social mobility than china. I'm a
bit disgusted that someone would even claim they are about the same.

I had no advantages of highly educated parents nor much money, yet I was able
to get through high school and into a good state university, then a decent phd
program; money was paid but not that much, and definitely nothing to the
public per-university schools I went to.

~~~
usaar333
The data really don't give me so much confidence.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png>

Yes, the US is better than China, but when you realize the US is much closer
to China than say.. Canada, it is a bit disheartening.

Yes, you did succeed with little to start with: congratulations. I could find
people with your story in China as well. The sad truth though is that most
people in your situation did not do as well as you; what happened to all of
your high school classmates?

GP may be exaggerating a bit, but there is an incredibly high correlation to
parental wealth and success in the US. For high school, if you don't go to a
nice expensive private school, it'll really help to live in a (expensive)
neighborhood with great public schools.

I attended a public university, but it was very clear that the kids there
disproportionately had high parental income. And.. the kids with the high
parental income tended to a) get higher grades and B) get better jobs
afterward.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I live in china, I know how bad it is here; I went through school in the
states, I know what goes on there. No one is bribing middle or high school
teachers in the states, you would go to jail if you even tried! Our only
problem is thte push from parents, oppurtinities are still open if you don't
have money as long as you work for it. The same is true in Canada actually, we
aren't that far off from our northern neighbors; only our unviserities cost
more but are also better at the high end.

But whatever problems we have in the states, the problems in china are very
different and much more wicked.

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gosukiwi
China seems like a not very good place to live in... Everything you read about
China confirms this idea even more.

~~~
potatolicious
Bear in mind your sources of information. The US media is perennially down
about all issues East Asian, and even moreso at a time when America feels
threatened. This goes beyond China, if you turned the clock back 20 years it
was Japan.

This happens on the other side of the fence too, the Chinese media also covers
disproportionately the failures of the US.

The only takeaway here is to not get all of your information from one place -
even if it is the New York Times.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
With the People's Daily or CCTV you'll get a much less biased view of china
(joking).

The system sucks and kudos to NYT for informing us, even if it has landed them
on the wrong side of the great firewall. Ya, bad things happen in the states
too but the NYT has no problem reporting on that! The western and Chinese
press are just completely incomparable when it comes to bias. Wen is also
right, this corruption will tear china apart if it doesn't end soon.

That being said, china can be a nice place to live if you are a foreigner,
have lots of moment to send your kids to international school, or are a local
with lots of guanxi, or you don't have kids yet. You'll hardly realize
corruption in your daily life outside of some key but rare activities (like
buying property or dealing with local schools).

~~~
potatolicious
I think you and I are talking about completely different things.

My post is in response to the notion that, given all the reporting you see in
Western media re: China, the whole country looks like one gigantic shithole.

This perception is not entirely surprising. Even when one gets all of their
news from the NYT (which as far as as bias and truthfulness goes, is pretty
damn good), there is a systemic bias in getting Eastern news from Western
sources by mere virtue of the fact that you'll never hear the good with the
bad - you'll just hear the bad.

This isn't some evil conspiracy to slag China - it is this way for the same
reason the 6 o'clock news is full of murders and robberies. Except, unlike the
6 o'clock news, you don't have real-life experience to temper the one-
sidedness.

If you get all of your world view from local news sources, you'll have a very
skewed world view, even if all of the content you consume is factual.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Right, I see what you mean. I was just pointing out if you only used Chinese
media to learn about china, it would be the best place in the world since they
cover up most of the bad, it's not like the west where our press is more than
happy to air our dirty laundry.

~~~
i_beg_to_differ
I think it is a bit more nuanced than that. Yes, there is censorship in China,
but not everything is censored equally. In particular, bribery cases usually
get wide coverage in the media, even in China Daily. If my understanding is
correct that's because the consensus is that the top brass is clean, it's just
the "underlings" that can be bought. So, the leadership allows reporting of
corruption (or even encourages it), as a means of keeping local officials in
check. Because the central government is well aware of the problem and regards
it as an existential threat, too.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Wow, the propaganda has worked really well on you. Bribery cases only get
publicized when someone has another ax to grind with the official, because
otherwise EVERYONE does it. The top brass is not clean at all, even Wen
Jiaobao (just check out the NYT reporting about his family's wealth!) but they
have enough guanxi to not get called out for it. That Bo Xilai was called out
had more to do with him tapping Hu Jintao's phone than him being a corrupt
general bad guy!

China's family-power politics is very entrenched by now, no one is really
immune to it: if you try to be clean, you'll get kicked out because that would
make you immune to the nuclear option (don't tell on me, and I won't tell on
you). The government will give the public some bones whenever some official
makes a serious mistake that can't be covered up, or otherwise someone who has
more guanxi than the target has some score to settle.

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jacques_chester
The problem is that there is pent-up demand and an open market is not being
allowed to operate. This always, everywhere, leads to what economists call a
"parallel market" and what everyone else calls a "black market".

------
sonabinu
This is terrible.

