Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World

by Yong Zhao

  A century has since passed, and China has reinvented itself several times. When the Communists rose to power, the original Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan, where it is considered a province. The Communist government gained control over the vast majority of China and established the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Taiwan evolved into a multiparty democracy; the PRC remained a single-party (Communist) government. Although today's China—that is, the People's Republic of China—is not the monarchy Goodnow suggested, its essence is absolute monarchist. There's only one essential difference: the monarch is not a person but a party. The People's Republic has all the features of Goodnow's ideal government: it is powerful, stable, permanent, and independent, without any significant, meaningful influence from the people.

  Given the negative response he received at the time, Frank Goodnow couldn't possibly have imagined today's growing admiration for the authoritarian government he suggested for China. Yet that government has been praised not only for leading China's miraculous economic growth and making it the world's second largest economy, but also for providing a viable alternative to the model of development in the dominant Western-style democracies.6 What would be even harder for Goodnow to imagine? The fact that there are now US citizens eager to import the Chinese style of government to America.

  “China for a Day”

  Thomas Friedman, the influential New York Times columnist who has written several best sellers on global issues, just might be China's biggest fan. More than once, he has expressed a “fantasy” of America being China for a day. The notion first appeared as the title of a chapter in his 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America. He then repeated his China-for-a-day dream on NBC's Meet the Press in May 2010, telling host David Gregory, “I have fantasized—don't get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day?”7

  Friedman believes a Chinese-style government offers great efficiency—the exact point Goodnow used to support his monarchy proposal a century ago. Frustrated with the ineffectual American government and its tedious two-party wrangling, Friedman wants a “China day” when “we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment.”8 In a 2009 New York Times column, he explains why the authoritarian Chinese style government is better than American democracy: “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”9

  Would Goodnow agree? He suggested an authoritarian government for China a century ago on the grounds that it wasn't yet ready for a popular democracy. But Friedman seems to view an authoritarian government as inherently preferable to a popular democracy. And unlike Goodnow, who based his suggestion on a series of logical assumptions, Friedman claims to have empirical evidence. In his latest three books—including That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back—Friedman offers statistics, anecdotes, personal observations, and interviews that relate the great achievements of China's forward-looking, visionary, courageous, wise, powerful, benevolent—and authoritarian—leadership.10

  After all, in merely thirty years, China's gross domestic product, a measure of the total size of a nation's economy, expanded thirty-fold, from $202 billion in 1980 to over $7 trillion in 2011. In 2007, China surpassed Germany to become the world's third largest economy.11 Three years later, China replaced Japan as the world's second largest economy.12 It is now well on the way to becoming the world's largest economy. Estimates vary, but China is generally projected to overtake the United States and become number one in the next decade.13

  In 2008, China dazzled the world with the Summer Olympic Games. The awe-inspiring opening ceremony, the guaranteed blue skies, the long list of foreign dignitaries, and the grand facilities drove home a single message: China had become a powerful player on the world stage. The 2010 World Expo, with over 250 countries participating, was another extravagant event that showed off a transformed and modernized China. China now has the world's longest high-speed rail, a third of the world's one hundred tallest buildings, and a network of expressways larger than the United States. It even (temporarily) took the title of the fastest computer away from the United States.

  “The Beijing Consensus”

  Thomas Friedman isn't the only one to notice China's astonishing growth and attribute it to a superior system of economic development. In 2004, Joshua Cooper Ramo, a former senior and foreign editor of Time magazine, published a seminal paper, “The Beijing Consensus,”14 through the UK-based Foreign Policy Center. A journalist and consultant, Ramo has extensive experiences with China. He based his findings on “more than 100 off-the-record discussions with leading thinkers in Chinese universities, think tanks and government.” 15

  Ramo coined the term Beijing consensus in pointed contrast to Washington consensus, a neoliberal and market-fundamentalist perspective for economic development derived from the Western liberal democratic tradition. Ramo wanted to show that “China is in the process of building the greatest asymmetric superpower the world has ever seen.”16 He believes that “China is marking a path for other nations around the world who are trying to figure out not simply how to develop their countries, but also how to fit into the international order in a way that allows them to be truly independent, to protect their way of life and political choices in a world with a single massively powerful centre of gravity. The Beijing consensus, he argues, “replaces the widely-discredited Washington Consensus, an economic theory made famous in the 1990s for its prescriptive, Washington-knows-best approach to telling other nations how to run themselves.”17

  A slew of publications followed describing China's rise as a global power that has begun to shape a new world order. Major media outlets in the West began assigning stories about China's growing global influence. A 2007 Time magazine article, “China Takes on the World,” asserted that “through its foreign investments and appetite for raw materials, the world's most populous country has already transformed economies from Angola to Australia. Now China is turning that commercial might into real political muscle, striding onto the global stage and acting like a nation that very much intends to become the world's next great power.”18

  In 2008 Joshua Kurlantzick, a special correspondent for the New Republic and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World.19 “Soft power” is a designation first used by Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. in his 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.20 In contrast to hard power—the ability to coerce—soft power is the ability to attract and persuade. Hard power comes from a country's military or economic strength, while soft power lies in the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.

  The year 2009 brought another best seller about the superior Chinese way: When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by the British journalist Martin Jacques.21 He too admired China's recent growth, then went a few steps further, describing how China had found its way to modernity without being Westernized and predicting that the Chinese way will become the more successful system in the future. China's rise, predicted Jacques, will end Western domination.

  Following Jacques's line of argument, Stefan Halper, director of American studies at the University of Cambridge, put forth more evidence that China's autocratic leadership has worked well and will continue to do so domestically and internationally. In his 2012 book, The Beijing Consensus: Legitimizing Authoritarianism in Our Time, he argues that while the US democratic government seems to hinder its economic progress, China's autocratic leadership is laying a foundation for f
uture economic success.22 Joshua Kurlantzick echoes Halper in his 2013 book, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government:

  Today, China—and to a lesser extent other successful authoritarian capitalists—offer a viable alternative to the leading democracies. In many ways, their systems pose the most serious challenge to democratic capitalism since the rise of communism and fascism in the 1920s and early 1930s. And in the wake of the global economic crisis, and the dissatisfaction with democracy in many developing nations, leaders in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are studying the Chinese model far more closely—a model that, eventually, will help undermine democracy in their countries.23

  “Surpassing Shanghai”

  While China's authoritarian capitalism is held up as a model for developing countries, China's educational system is downright worshipped, even in the developed West. Thomas Friedman wants America to be China only “for a day” politically, but when it comes to education, a growing number of Western political leaders, academics, school reformers, and media pundits want to be China forever. And although it's unlikely, setting aside Friedman's fantasy, that any Western democratic nation will seriously borrow China's form of government any time soon, it's already the aspiration of many Western nations to outeducate China, and to do it in the Chinese way.

  For an example, read Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems.24 Marc Tucker, CEO of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE), pulled together NCEE research to analyze the five leading education systems in the world: Finland, Japan, Singapore, Canada (Ontario), and Shanghai, chosen to represent China. Shanghai earned its place primarily because of its students' scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA, coordinated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, measures fifteen-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy. Given every three years since 2000, it has become the world's largest international educational assessment, with some seventy countries participating in the 2009 round—Shanghai's first. It was the first time any Chinese students had taken the PISA or any other large-scale international assessment. The Shanghai students aced the test, scoring top in all three categories, and they did it again in the 2012 round.

  The sweep shouldn't have been surprising: Chinese students have been outscoring their counterparts in the United States and other Western countries in smaller-scale comparative studies for quite a long time. Two decades ago, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education, coauthored by psychologists Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, systematically documented the superb performance of Chinese students and the characteristics of their outstanding education.25 But the PISA results officially earned China the “world's best education” title, and that victory had a powerful effect on the West. The New York Times reported that the Chinese students' performance had “stunned” American experts and political leaders.26 “An absolute wake-up call” to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it gave President Obama a “Sputnik moment,” suggesting that China had beaten America in education just as the former Soviet Union had beaten America into space. Ever since the 2009 PISA results came out, Obama has repeatedly vowed to outeducate China in order to outcompete it.

  Shanghai is China's most sophisticated urban center. Perhaps its students' results were an exception? In 2012, students from nine Chinese provinces took the test. PISA chief Andreas Schleicher, the German statistician who managed to rebrand the test as the gold standard of education, hinted to BBC reporter Sean Coughlan about the unpublished results: “Shanghai is an exceptional case—and the results there are close to what I expected. But what surprised me more were the results from poor provinces that came out really well. The levels of resilience are just incredible.” Coughlan's article, titled “China: The World's Most Clever Country?” summed up Schleicher's praise for Chinese education: not only would the test results for disadvantaged pupils be the envy of any Western country, but taken as a whole, “the findings indicate that China has an education system that is overtaking many Western countries.”27

  Such a great education is certainly worth emulating, especially for Western countries convinced they're losing their battle with China on the education front. In December 2010, shortly after visiting China, British Secretary of Education Michael Gove published a passionate commentary in the Telegraph.28 He recounted his amazement when he was given a book of published research papers, all written by students in a Beijing school. “Schools in the Far East are turning out students who are working at an altogether higher level than our own,” Gove wrote, urging his country “to implement a cultural revolution just like the one they've had in China.” At the close of his commentary, he announced, “Like Chairman Mao, we've embarked on a Long March to reform our education system.”

  Gove devised a long list of revolutionary strategies, like lengthening school days and shortening holidays for British children. In April 2013, he announced his proposal, and he won strong support from the Whitehall with yet another reminder: “We can either start working as hard as the Chinese, or we'll all soon be working for the Chinese.”29

  The message to the Brits: do as the Chinese do or else risk being taken over. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told the UK newspaper the Independent in 2011: “Everybody is looking at China and saying, if we don't lift our game, China is going to eat our lunch economically.”30

  “Be Afraid of the Friends Who Flatter You”

  China's recent accomplishments certainly deserve to be recognized, and China is of course happy to have its triumphs acknowledged by outsiders. As the oldest continuous civilization, China suffered humiliating defeats by Western powers in the 1800s, and for nearly two hundred years, it was left far behind. The Chinese economy stagnated. Chinese immigrants were mistreated and excluded from the mainstream in many Western countries. The underpinning values of the Chinese culture were called into question again and again by both the Chinese and Westerners.

  Since the 1800s, outside forces have tried using religious, economic, military, and political forces to Westernize China—all without much success. Until very recently, the West was trying to export its cultural and ideological values, its Christianity, and its economic and political system to China. Now, all of a sudden, China has been pronounced the model for others because of its superior political system, education, and culture. And those “others” include influential Westerners.

  Not surprisingly, the West's praise has been received hungrily by China, a country that has yearned for outside recognition for a long time. Compliments are warmly welcomed by the Chinese government, which is eager for any evidence to ensure its legitimacy. Publications praising China are quickly translated and published in China, where they become instant best sellers. Authors such as Thomas Friedman and Martin Jacques are China's close friends and honored guests, treated as royalty by government officials and nationalistic media.

  But questioning voices have begun to emerge. Bold Chinese scholars caution the Chinese not to be “murdered by flattery” from Western writers. In China Refuses to Be Killed by Flattery, Shu Taifeng, an editor of Oriental Perspectives (a popular Chinese news magazine similar to Time or Newsweek), explains why China should be cautious:

  Why is it a bad thing to be praised? It seems to be a silly question. However, if the people who praise you do not really understand you, this flattery is either the result of general good intentions or romantic idolization as a form of self-motivation. Or it could be that they want something from you, even to lure you to sacrifice yourself for them…

  Praising China has become a fashionable trend both within and without China. Their motivation varies, but regardless, “the tree wants to remain calm although the wind does not stop.” If China does not stay calm, we will lose our cool head before these sincere and not so sincere p
raises and lose our orientation. If so, flattery becomes murderous.

  Our neighbor Japan has been “murdered by flattery.” Japan grew tremendously after the Second World War and rebuilt itself as a powerful economy in about 20 years. Western praise for Japan at the time was not a little bit less than today's flattery of China. The American scholar Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number One: Lessons for America in 1979, suggesting that Japan had surpassed the U.S. in many aspects. Nevertheless, in less than 10 years, Japan's economic bubble burst and has slipped into decades of recession.31

  “A Very Large Gap”

  Chinese leaders and scholars are keenly aware of the issues China faces. “China has increased its competitiveness in some areas, but there is a very large gap between China and developed countries,” said Yang Jiechi, China's minister of foreign affairs, in his opening remarks at the 2013 US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.32 In his book, Shu cites abundant data to show that despite three decades of stunning growth, China's economy remains volatile, not only because it has a fragile foundation with extremely low per capita wealth but also because of structural imbalances characterized by growing income inequality, increasing mass protests, a deteriorating environment, and lagging development of “soft power.” “An even more important and perhaps key challenge is the decoupling of political and economic reforms,” Shu writes, “even the direction of reforms is still fuzzy.” Burdened with massive challenges, Shu pleads with the Chinese to remain “calm, calm, and calm” and not be fooled by Western authors such as Martin Jaques, who have a very “shallow” understanding of China.