by Yong Zhao
Shu Taifeng is not alone. His book has been well received and hotly discussed inside China. In spite of its apparently negative views of China, a state-controlled publishing house published it. It was also carried online by multiple online portals under close watch of the government. Even state-run media outlets have run opinion pieces echoing Shu's views.
Although the political system is an extremely sensitive subject in China—and debate about it is generally silenced—education is discussed pretty freely. Again, although the Chinese are happy that their students scored higher than everyone else in the world, virtually no one in China believes that the country has the best education system. The Chinese government has undertaken numerous massive efforts to reform public education. Chinese parents have spent their life savings to send their children to study overseas or in Western-style schools in China rather than keep them in the “world's best education system.” Education has been widely recognized as the primary culprit for China's lack of creative and innovative talents—and a major concern for China's success in the future.
Fatal Attraction: The Real China Threat
The West has dominated the world for two centuries, with Britain owning the nineteenth century and the United States the twentieth. At the moment it looks as if China will reign in the twenty-first century—an intensely uncomfortable prospect for America and other Western countries. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, 52 percent of the general public in the United States were concerned that “China's emergence as a world power is a major threat to the U.S.”33 See figures 1.1 and 1.2.
Figure 1.1 Percentage of Americans Who Are Concerned about China's Military and Economic Strength
Source: “US Public, Experts Differ on China Policies,” Pew Research Center, Washington, DC. September 18, 2012, http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2012/09/US-Public-and-Elite-Report-FINAL-FOR-PRINT-September-18-2012.pdf. Reprinted with permission.
Figure 1.2 What Worries Americans the Most about China's Economy
Source: “US Public, Experts Differ on China Policies,” Pew Research Center, Washington, DC. September 18, 2012, http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2012/09/US-Public-and-Elite-Report-FINAL-FOR-PRINT-September-18-2012.pdf. Reprinted with permission.
While some are concerned about China's military power, more are worried about its economic prowess. The Pew survey found that 59 percent of Americans were concerned about China's economic strength compared to 28 percent concerned about its military strength. A majority (62 percent) of Americans viewed China as a competitor. Majorities were worried about China holding large amounts of American debt (78 percent), taking away US jobs (71 percent), and causing the large trade deficit to the United States (61 percent).
Until recently, most Westerners haven't been concerned about the existential threat the China model presents to the West. But the more we glorify China as a viable model of economic development, the more anxiety Westerners will feel about China's political influence on the global stage. In his article, “How China Will Change the Global Political Map,” Martin Jacques makes this prediction:
China has the world's second largest economy. As it overtakes the United States in the relatively near future, and becomes the world's largest economy, China will exercise a growing global influence. Meanwhile, the West—the home of Western liberal democracy—is in relative economic decline. By 2030, it will, by one estimate, account for only 28 percent of global GDP, compared with 33 percent for China and 67 percent for the developing world. In such circumstances, the West's political influence is bound to decline.34
Despite widespread concerns about China's rise, it is unlikely that China will invade any other country, let alone engage in military conflicts with the West. As the Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. wrote recently, “Given shared global challenges like financial stability, cybercrime, nuclear proliferation, and climate change, China and the United States also have much to gain from working together.”35 The economic threat is also debatable. Some economists would argue that China may have brought more economic benefits than threats to the United States and the West by opening its vast market, supplying inexpensive labor, and making stabilizing investments during times of economic turmoil. Although it is painful to see jobs lost to China, this is the nature of economic development, and such offshoring brings stimuli for new innovations and new industries. The political threat may have been grossly exaggerated as well. China, according to many analysts, is not going to take over the United States any time soon. “Right now, the United States is vastly more powerful than the People's Republic of China,” wrote Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University. “Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.”36
China does present a dangerous threat. That threat, however, does not originate with China or its actions. The threat comes from the West's current infatuation with China's educational system and from the actions that countries such as the United States and Great Britain have taken to emulate that system. Those actions betray a shallow understanding of a very old and complex culture, and they confuse short-term outcomes with long-term, sustainable progress.
Chinese education is authoritarian in nature, and it has been for centuries. The spirit of education in China today flows from a two-thousand-year history of imperial exams. Chinese education produces excellent test scores, a short-term outcome that can be achieved by rote memorization and hard work, but like the Chinese government itself, it does not produce a citizenry of diverse, creative, and innovative talent. Chinese education proved a failure back in 1842, when China lost the first Opium War to Great Britain. Ever since then, China has been trying to learn from the West.
If Western countries successfully adopt China's education model and abandon their own tradition of education, they may see their standing rise on international tests, but they will lose what has made them modern: creativity, entrepreneurship, and a genuine diversity of talents.
The only way China will win the global competition of the future is for the West to begin educating the way China does.
Notes
1. Sun Yat-sen was an alumnus of President Barack Obama's alma mater, Punahou School in Hawaii.
2. Noel Pugach, “Embarrassed Monarchist: Frank J. Goodnow and Constitutional Development in China: 1913–1915,” Pacific Historical Review 42, no. 4 (1973): 499–517, 504–505.
3. “Embarrassed Meritocrats,” Economist, October 27, 2012, http://www.economist.com/news/china/21565228-westerners-who-laud-chinese-meritocracy-continue-miss-point-embarrassed-meritocrats.
4. Pugach, “Embarrassed Monarchist,” 508.
5. Ibid., 506.
6. Joshua Kurlantzick, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
7. Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). Meet the Press, transcript for May 23, 2010, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37279599/ns/meet_the_press/page/4/#.UZBBjStgZnA/.
8. Ibid.
9. Thomas Friedman, “Our One-Party Democracy,” New York Times, August 16, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=2&.
10. The three books are The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005); Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America; and That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (New York: Picador, 2011).
11. China Passes Germany in Economic Rankings,” CNN.com/asia, January 15, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/15/china.economy/.
12. “China Overtakes Japan as World's Second-Biggest Economy,” Bloomberg.com, August 16, 2010, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–08–16/china-economy-passes-japan-s-in-second-quarter-capping-three-decade-rise.html.
13. “OECD Report Says China's Economy Will Overt
ake US Economy by 2016, International Business Times, March 22, 2013, http://www.ibtimes.com/oecd-report-says-chinas-economy-will-overtake-us-economy-2016–1146333.
14. Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Beijing Consensus. (London: Foreign Policy Center, 2004), 4.
15. Ibid., 2.
16. Ibid., 3.
17. Ibid., 4.
18. Michael Elliott, “China Takes on the World,” Time, January 11, 2007.
19. Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
20. Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
21. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (New York: Penguin, 2009).
22. Stefan Halper, The Beijing Consensus: Legitimizing Authoritarianism in Our Time (New York: Basic Books, 2012).
23. Joshua Kurlantzick, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 120.
24. Marc Tucker, ed., Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2011).
25. Harold M. Stevenson and James W. Stigler, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
26. Sam Dillon, “Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators,” New York Times, December 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2.
27. Sean Coughlan, “China: The World's Cleverest Country?” BBC News, May 8, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-17585201.
28. Michael Gove, “Michael Gove: My Revolution for Culture in Classroom,” Telegraph, December 28, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8227535/Michael-Gove-my-revolution-for-culture-in-classroom.html.
29. Richard Adams and Jessica Shepherd, “Michael Gove Proposes Longer School Day and Shorter Holidays,” Guardian, April 19, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/18/michael-gove-longer-school-day-holidays.
30. Steve Connor, “US Science Chief Warns: ‘China Will Eat Our Lunch,’ ” Independent. November 25, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/us-science-chief-warns-china-will-eat-our-lunch-2219974.html.
31. Taifeng Shu, Zhongguo Jujue Pengsha [China refuses to be killed by flattery] (Beijing: Zhongguo Gongshanglian Chubanshe, 2011).
32. Yang Jiechi, opening remarks at the 2013 US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Washington, DC, July 7, 2013, http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2013–07/12/content_2445559.htm.
33. Pew Research Center, “US Public, Experts Differ on China Policies: Public Deeply Concerned about China's Economic Power,” September 18, 2018, http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/09/18/u-s-public-experts-differ-on-china-policies/.
34. Martin Jacques, “How China Will Change the Global Political Map,” Transatlantic Academy, March 2013, http://www.transatlanticacademy.org/sites/default/files/publications/Jacques_GlobalPoliticalMap_Mar13.pdf.
35. Joseph Nye Jr., “China's Rise Doesn't Mean War,” Foreign Policy, January 2, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom.
36. Daniel W. Drezner, “…and China Isn't Beating the U.S.,” Foreign Policy, January 2, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom.
2
The Emperors' Game: A Perfect Machine for Homogenization
When we admire Chinese education today, we're admiring essentially the same characteristics that infatuated Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, for example, the brilliant German Lutheran philosopher and mathematician, had a love for the Chinese polity and philosophy that rivals any expressed today. “Even if we are equal to them in the productive arts, and…in the theoretical sciences,” he wrote, “it is certainly true (I am almost ashamed to admit) that they surpass in practical philosophy, by which I mean the rules of ethics and politics which have been devised for the conduct and benefit of human life.”1
Jesuit missionaries to China shared the same opinion, sending glowing stories back to Europe about the Oriental Empire's superior Confucian philosophy and utopian society. Their observations so challenged Christian orthodoxy that several books on China were ordered burned by the church, including Nouveau mémoire sur l'état présent de la Chine by Father Louis le Comte. The French Jesuit missionary dared to assert that the Chinese system of morality was “on a par with the Christian revelation as a supreme product of the moral aspirations of Man.”2 And the German philosopher Christian Wolff was ordered to leave his position at the University of Halle immediately after delivering a speech expressing his admiration for China: “In the Art of Governing, this Nation has even surpassed all others without exception.”3
Bonfires and dismissals did not prevent China from becoming, in Europe, “better known than some provinces of Europe itself.” Sinophilism swiftly developed into Sinomania.4 The French Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, was among the most devoted Sinophiles, along with the French economist François Quesnay, who was dubbed the “Confucius of Europe.”5 Both Voltaire and Quesnay fell in love with Chinese despotism and suggested that it be a model for European nations. China's political system struck Voltaire as ideal: “the combination of a monarch with almost unlimited powers and an official class chosen on a rational, that is on an intellectual, basis, and noteworthy for its freedom from political corruption as well as from religious bias.”6
Westerners were awed by the strengths of China's official class. Sinologist A. R. Davis, of the University of Sydney, writes about “the Chinese scholar-official” and makes “little apology for this somewhat cumbersome term, because, if he were an object of wonder to the Western world, it is hardly surprising that our Western vocabulary should lack a satisfactory equivalent.” The labels “literati,” “bureaucrats,” “mandarins,” and “gentry” are all inaccurate “for it was because scholars were the officials and the officials were scholars that Voltaire admired China's government.”7 The Chinese scholar-officials have been held in high esteem for centuries, praised for making China the prosperous and stable empire it was. First, they occupied government positions, administering the daily business of the government on behalf of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. On retirement, they served as moral examples, teachers, and unofficial judges. They didn't simply carry out the orders of the rulers; they guided the rulers. Kenneth Winston, lecturer in ethics at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote a paper in 2005 suggesting “that only by integrating the technocratic aspects of a Kennedy School of Government education with the ethical orientation of scholar-officials can the Chinese provide for the requisites of public administration in a future democratic society.”8 Winston describes the scholar-officials as
a self-conscious, educated elite who took it as their highest calling to enter government service, typically in the central bureaucracy or in provincial administrations. As humanists steeped in the moral wisdom of the past (i.e. the classic Confucian texts), they devoted themselves to protecting traditional values in the political realm: serving as the conscience of rulers—counseling them through moral suasions, remonstrating with them to rectify defective policies, chastising them for personal failings—sometimes at great personal risk. They offered a moral compass, based on learning and reflection, and acted as critics, moral educators, and disinterested proponents of the public good.9
The Fifth Great Invention
And how did one come to be a scholar-official? Through the keju system, which administered the imperial exam. While the Chinese were using examinations to select government officials in the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) more than two thousand years ago, keju officially began in AD 605. It became the dominant way to select government officials in the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907), and it gained even more pre
eminence in the Song dynasty (AD 960–1279). Keju lasted for thirteen hundred years, until it was abolished in 1905 by the emperor of the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911). For good or for bad, keju was responsible for the continuity and antiquity of the Chinese civilization.
The format and content of the examinations varied slightly across dynasties, and there were interruptions at times of turmoil and during changes of dynasties. Still, the process and principles remained pretty much the same for the entire thirteen hundred years. The exams consistently probed knowledge of the Confucian classics, and their format was typically memorization and interpretation of the texts, as well as expository writing on current affairs and politics.
Examinations were typically offered at three levels: local, provincial, and national. They were norm referenced, meaning that only a certain number of examinees could succeed and be privileged to move to the next level. Success at each level earned the examinee a title and certain privileges, just as professional degrees do today. Depending on the time, those who succeeded at the most basic level could be excused from certain taxes and corvée (labor for the state) and would have the opportunity to be appointed a government official. The highest “degree” was Jinshi, awarded to winners of the national-level exam. A certain number of Jinshi were allowed to attend another final-level exam, held in the imperial court before the emperor. The winners were ranked based on their exam results, and the highest-ranked examinees climbed to the top of the bureaucracy.