Peking's Biggest Test

Two young members of China's Red Guards sit in a self-consciously pretentious coffeehouse in Peking. Between sips of espresso, down in the poorly-lit small room below street level, they discuss...SAT scores?

And they say East and West shall never meet.

Last year the Chinese government instituted nationwide standardized tests for all prospective college students for the first time since the Cultural Revolution in 1966. On July 20 nearly six million students took the test to compete for only 300,000 places in Chinese colleges and universities. The test covered eight subjects--politics, history, geography, physics, mathematics, chemistry, Chinese language and a foreign language. All students were required to take the tests in politics, Chinese and math, and they had to choose two or three of the remaining subjects.

A translation of the exam and analyses of the subject areas are available from the U.S. Office of Education (USOE), which recently published "The 1978 National College Entrance Exam in the People's Republic of China," which insiders predict will soon be a major motion picture.

Recent wall posters in Peking criticized the now tests as evidence of a continuing "deviation from the Maoist line of egalitarian non competitiveness" and blamed the exams on "American imperialist SAT mongering." However, the government downplayed the posters as "further counterrevolutionary critism of the regime from the notorious Gang of Four."

Meanwhile, pro-Western students put up counter-wall posters calling on the government to bring Stanley Kaplan to China so they could learn "to cram more efficiently." The Party Central Committee on Education is reportedly sending a delegation to Harvard to study the feasibility of importing other Western educational methods into China, including "Monarch notes, all-nighters, and reading periods."

Political observers see the introduction of standardized testing as the latest move in China's campaign to modernize rapidly through building up a technocratic, managerial elite, ending Mao's long-term efforts to eradicate all hierarchy and status inequalities even at the cost of slower growth and inefficiency. Experts also note the testing may be evidence of growing strength within the Chinese hierarchy by the backers of Teng-hsiao Ping, who was intrigued by the massive test-administering bureaucracy he saw when he visited the U.S. Hua Kuo-feng is a known foe of SATS, and the establishment of the tests in China may foreshadow a coming Teng coup to topple him from power.

But all of this high-level politicking is far from the minds of the students themselves. Like their American counterparts, they are unable to think of anything but their test scores and whether they can get ahead in the system. With only five per cent of the applicants getting places in college, competition is fierce and anxiety abounds.

Before the tests were re-introduced, college admission was based largely on political connections and correct ideology. Important bureaucrats pulled rank to get their children into the universities. The situation has improved since then, but the system is still not completely fair.

"Lost of cheating was still going on," says Patty Wen '80, who spent seven months at Peking University (P.U.) last year as a foreign student. "There was one case publicized in the People's Daily about a girl at P.U. Her father was an upper-level cadre who arranged for her to have special conditions to take the test in--she had a tutor there with her while taking it. She eventually admitted it and was sent back home."

The competition for P.U. is especially intense. It is considered the top school in China and recruits from all over the nation. It is the Chinese Harvard.

"Sons and daughters of intellectuals are getting into P.U. these days and people from worker-peasant backgrounds can't get in," Wen explains. "Under Mao only worker-peasant kids got in, and lots of people, many intellectuals, were sent to the countryside as part of their education."

Wen's parents fled China in 1949 because her grandfather was a high official in the Kuomintang. "He taught six years at Hartford and then changed his mind and decided Communism was good," she says, "sort of a Confucian thing, like the mandate of Heaven changed. So he returned to China to work for the foreign ministry on U.S.-China and China Taiwan relations."

That connection helped Wen, an East Asian Studies major, get into P.U. as one of a handful of foreign students. Today there are about 50. Wen wants to return to China for a little while after graduation to see friends and travel around, but she says she prefers life in the U.S. overall.

"It used to be admission to Chinese colleges was based on who could be more red, and formal education was lost in political in-doctrination," she continues. "At P.U. today everyone studies English, and the first year students are doing better than the fourth year students."

Politics still counts, however, "A very high percentage at P.U. are at least Communist Youth members if not Communist Party members," Wen says. "But some of the Party members I've met are among the least revolutionary in their thinking. It doesn't mean as much about your politics as it did before."

The idea to get hold of the tests and analyze them was born in the brain of Dr. Robert Barendsen, a Far Eastern specialist in the USOE's Division of International Education. "In 1978 lots of Chinese students began appearing on our shores and we had to integrate them into our university system," he says. "Since we were just getting into the business of academic exchange with China and since these were the first nationally standardized tests since the Cultural Revolution we wanted to use them to get a feel for the kind of background college-level Chinese had in several subjects."

The tests were "partially available through official channels and party through pickups by private visitors to China" he explains. Barendsen assembled a staff of US experts to evaluate the tests, which consist of short-answer and essay questions.

Out of all the tests, only math, physics and chemistry easily lend themselves to cross-cultural comparison, and U.S. college-bound students are generally better prepared in these areas, according to the test evaluators, Nevertheless, the Chinese youth come out pretty well, and may even surpass U.S. students in some of the liberal arts areas of the test. Educational Testing Services in Princeton has several copies of the USOE report and "they are analyzing them carefully," Barendsen says.

When they take the test, students list four or five colleges in China they would be willing to attend, and officials assign students who pass to specific institutions. "It's incredibly nerve-wracking--the prospects of not passing are so dismal," Wen says. "I had a roommate at P.U. who was just 20 and had an ulcer already."

"I met a cabdriver in Peking who told me his son had worked very hard but failed the test the first year," she continues. "The driver told me, 'Now he spends every day in the library studying. I don't have much culture and I can't help him. I hope he passes."'

To help prospective applicants, China's Ministry of Education in April 1978 put out a review outline in each of the eight subjects for nationwide distribution. Just like a Barron's College Outline, only you read it vertically. No one can say just how far the Americanization of Chinese education will go. Maybe they'll institute MCAT's to screen out incompetent barefoot doctors. One thing will never be the same though--they can never lure Mr. Test over to Peking to proctor the exams. Not for all the tea in China.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS FROM THE POLITICS EXAM

Short Answers

1] Explain the following terms:

class

practice

universality of contradictions

2] What social forms does human society pass through in its development from a low to a high stage?

3] According to Mao's theory of three worlds, what countries and regions are included in the first, second, and third worlds?

ESSAY

Using the principle of material things first and consciousness second, discuss the importance of the Party's excellent workstyle preceeding from the actual situation and seeking truth from facts.

Clockwise from top left:

Peking students going to take test; The caverns of Mem Hall; Chou did well enough on his tests to make it to the top; these people did slightly worse.