China | Study hard, be rich, get ahead
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Study hard, be rich, get ahead”
Children from poor and rural areas have little hope of keeping up with their rich counterparts
贫穷或农村家庭孩子赶上富裕同伴的可能性微乎其微
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In China’s TOP-GROSSING summer film, “Successor”, a rich businessman seeks to motivate his son by raising him in poverty. Young Jiye believes his family is truly poor. He is told to “change his fate” by studying hard and doing well in China’s university-entrance exam, known as the gaokao. But just in case, his father also hires undercover tutors. Fake street peddlers test Jiye’s English. The neighbourhood butcher gives him maths puzzles. A tutor posing as the family’s grandmother tells the boy that her dying wish is for him to study at an elite university. After her (staged) cremation, a grieving Jiye rushes back to his textbooks.暑假最热门的华语电影得数《抓娃娃》，故事讲述了富豪商人为了激励孩子，从小将其穷养的故事。小继业以为自己的家庭非常贫困，被告知只有通过努力学习，在高考中成绩优异，才能“改变命运”。但为了确保万无一失，他的富豪老爹还是聘用了一些秘密导师——伪装后的街头小贩测试他的英语，伪装后街区屠夫给他数学出谜，伪装后的祖母告诉小继业，自己的遗愿就是让他考入顶尖高校。在祖母（假扮的）火葬后，悲伤的继业由匆匆赶回复习。The satire has been a hit because, in some ways, it reflects a painful reality. There are a hundred or so elite universities in China. Acceptance into one of them can change a young person’s life. Experts reckon that graduates of these schools earn roughly a third more from their first job than graduates of second-tier universities. (China has around 3,000 tertiary-education institutions in total, including universities and vocational colleges.) In theory, everyone has an equal shot at getting into an elite university by acing the gaokao. In practice, children from wealthy families, who often go to the best high schools and receive tutoring, have a big advantage.这部讽刺作品大热，是因为在某种程度上，它反映出一个痛苦的现实。中国有一百多所顶尖高校，进入其中任何一所便足以改变年轻人的一生。专家预测顶尖高校毕业生毕业后首份工作的收入就比二流大学毕业生高出三分之一。（中国约有3000所高等教育机构，包括大学和职业学院。）理论上，每个人都可以公平地通过高考进入这些顶尖高校，但实际上，那些上最好高中、接受辅导的富裕家庭的孩子更有优势。
China is far from being the only country with an unequal education system. But the difference in opportunities for Chinese children based on whether they are rich or poor, urban or rural, is stark. At a meeting last month of the Communist Party’s most senior members (known as the “third plenum” because it is the third in a five-yearly cycle of such meetings), officials promised to make things fairer. 中国绝非唯一一个教育体系不公平的国家，但中国的孩子因贫富差异和城乡差异所造成的教育机会的差距却是赤裸裸的。在上个月的共产党“三中全会”上，政府承诺将促进教育公平。
China offers nine years of free, compulsory education which usually ends at the age of 15. Students must then pass a test to enter a senior secondary school. These schools charge fees that poor families struggle to afford. After three more years of study students take the gaokao. Kids in rural areas, if they haven’t ended their studies already, rarely make it beyond this point. A paper published in 2015 estimated that students from poor counties were seven times less likely than their urban counterparts to attend university—and 11 times less likely to get into an elite one. Studies since then suggest things may have got even harder for poor students.中国的九年义务教育通常结束于15岁。之后，学生们必须通过中考去考入高中。高中学校收取的学费是贫困家庭难以负担的。经过三年的学习，学生们参加了高考。农村地区的孩子，即使他们还没有辍学，也很少能迈过这一步。据2015年发表的一篇文章估计，来自贫困县的学生上大学的可能性比城市学生低7倍，进入顶尖高校的可能性低11倍。研究表明，从那开始，对于贫困学生来说，事情变得越来越困难。
In recent decades, as the competition for spots at elite schools and universities has grown fiercer, parents have sought any edge they can get for their children. Many hired private instructors, such that by 2021 the tutoring industry in China was generating $100bn in annual revenue. But that same year, in an effort to level the playing-field, the government banned most for-profit tutoring services for students in the nine years of compulsory education. Police raided cram schools that offer coaching on how to pass exams. Many of the firms that provided these services collapsed.近几十年来，精英学校和顶尖高校的竞争越来越激烈，家长们竭尽所能为孩子寻求优势。许多家长聘请了私教，以至于到2021年，中国的家教行业年收入已经达到了1000亿美元。但同年，为了创造公平环境，政府叫停了大多数为九年义务教育阶段提供辅导的营利性辅导机构。警方突击搜查了为了应试型补习学校，许多这样的公司纷纷倒闭。
The moves did not work, say researchers at Peking University. They analysed surveys of household spending before and after the tutoring ban and found that low- and middle-income families were, on average, spending less on after-school education. The richest families, though, were spending more. Tutors were still active. But because they were acting illegally, they charged more, pricing most people out.北京大学的研究人员表示，这些举措并没有奏效。他们分析了家教禁令前后的家庭支出，发现中低收入的家庭平均在课后辅导上的支出较少。然而，最富有的家庭花费更多。课后辅导仍然很活跃。但由于他们的行为是非法的，因此要收取更高昂的费用，将大多数人排除在外。
Parents continue to feel pressure to help their children keep up, says a well-off mother in the city of Nantong. She describes her 13-year-old son as “not brilliant, but good enough”. He began to fall behind because his classmates were all learning the curriculum ahead of time from tutors. So over the summer holidays she forked out 60,000 yuan ($8,400) for extra lessons, roughly equivalent to the annual earnings of a typical migrant worker in China.家长方面依然会感受到帮助孩子跟上进度的压力，一位来自南通、条件不错的母亲说到。她形容自己13岁的儿子时称他“不够聪明但足够努力”。因为他的同学都通过私教提前学习课程，因此儿子有些落后。为此，她在暑假花了6万元人民币（8400美元）为儿子补课，这些钱相当于是一个普通农民工一年的收入。
Families that live in or come from the countryside face a bigger challenge. Rural schools tend to be shoddy, sometimes lacking basic facilities such as a library. Their students often end up in secondary schools that focus on vocational training. This rarely leads to university. The children of rural migrants who work in cities have it no better. Many are barred from city schools because of the hukou system, which ties access to public services to the place where one’s household is registered.对于农村家庭来说，挑战更大。农村学校设施简陋，有时连图书馆这样的基本设施都缺乏。这些学生往往只能进入以职业培训为主的高中，难以进入大学。进城务工人员的子女也面临类似问题。由于户籍制度的限制，他们无法进入城市学校就读。
To make matters worse, elite universities, which are concentrated in wealthy areas, reserve a disproportionate number of spots for locals. In 2016 the Ministry of Education tried to get such universities to set aside 140,000 places, about 6.5% of the total, for students from poorer areas. To make room, fewer locals would be admitted. But protests erupted in cities. “Why should they eat from our bowls?” one angry mother asked the New York Times. The government walked back the policy.更糟糕的是，顶尖高校集中在富裕地区，并为本地学生保留了过多的名额。2016年，教育部试图让这些大学为贫困地区的学生预留14万个名额，占总名额的约6.5%。为此，本地录取名额将减少。然而，这在城市引发了抗议。一位愤怒的母亲在接受《纽约时报》采访时问道：“为什么他们要来占用本地资源？”政府最终收回了这一政策。
The result of all this is that many talented children do not reach their full potential. Take Jiang Ping, a 17-year-old who shot to fame in June after she made it to the final round of a prestigious maths competition organised by Alibaba, a tech giant. The public was shocked to discover that Ms Jiang was from a village and attended a vocational high school (most of the other finalists were students at elite universities). In an interview with local media, she recounted how she herself questioned her worthiness to join the competition.这一切的结果是，许多有才华的孩子未能充分发挥他们的潜力。以17岁的姜萍为例，她在今年6月因进入由科技巨头阿里巴巴举办的知名数学竞赛的决赛而一举成名。公众惊讶地发现，姜萍来自农村，并且就读于一所职业高中（大多数其他决赛选手都是名牌大学的学生）。在接受当地媒体采访时，她自己都质疑自己是否有资格参加这次比赛。她回忆道，
Over a third of Chinese children live in rural areas. The government’s actions betray concern about how they are faring. China scores well on international measures of academic prowess, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a battery of tests taken by 15-year-olds in dozens of countries. Tellingly, though, Chinese officials let only children from good schools in a few wealthy regions take the PISA tests.超过三分之一的中国儿童生活在农村地区。政府的种种举措表明他们对这些孩子的状况有所担忧。中国在国际学术能力测评中表现出色，例如在国际学生评估项目（PISA）中获得高分，该测试面向全球几十个国家的15岁学生。然而，耐人寻味的是，中国官方只允许来自少数富裕地区优质学校的孩子参加PISA测试。
Experts say the government should invest more in rural areas, increase the availability of pre-school education and reform the hukou system so that the children of migrants can attend city schools. Such measures would help poor families, but they might not decrease inequality as much as hoped, reckons Li Hongbin, a professor at Stanford University. That is because the rich will continue to find ways to stay ahead. Some of this is a self-perpetuating cycle: students from wealthy families attend elite universities, go on to get jobs with high salaries, then pay whatever it takes to make sure their own children follow the same path.专家表示，政府应在农村地区加大投资，增加学前教育的普及率，并改革户籍制度，让流动人口子女能够在城市学校就读。斯坦福大学教授李宏斌认为，这些措施确实能帮助贫困家庭，但可能无法如预期那样大幅减少不平等。这是因为富人仍会想方设法保持领先地位。这在某种程度上是一个自我延续的循环：富裕家庭的学生进入顶尖高校，随后获得高薪工作，然后不惜一切代价确保自己的孩子走上同样的道路。
That is not how “Successor” plays out, though. Jiye does get a stellar gaokao score. But (spoiler alert) he chooses not to attend an elite university. Instead he goes to a sports college. A degree from such institutions is no guarantee of a good job. Still, after some thought, Jiye’s father seems happy enough with the decision. Most Chinese parents would not be. ■然而，《抓娃娃》的剧情并非如此。继业确实在高考中取得了优异成绩。但（剧透警告）他选择不去读名牌大学，而是去了体育学院。这类学校的学历并不能保证找到好工作。不过，经过一番思考，继业的父亲似乎对这一决定感到满意。而大多数中国家长则不会认同。■
审阅：Xinxing
