The key that no longer opens doors

For Chinese people getting a good education is the only means by which a person can change their life. In the West, certainly in England, they will want to know if you can actually do the job, regardless of what your educational qualifications are, and in fact it is said that within ten seconds of an interview, most employers will already have made up their mind as to whether or not you will fit in with their firm. Hence the interview questions these days are designed to work out what kind of personality you have and if their company needs such a person as you. A highly qualified friend of mine just failed an interview for a job that he really wanted because the interviewer asked him what he least liked about his current job. My friend said it was stressful. At the end of the interview the interviewer said "I am worried about the fact that you have an inability to deal with stress". My friend's qualifications, which were perfect for the job did not help him.

Getting back to China, if education is the key to opening doors, the Gaokao (the fiendishly difficult university entrance exam) is the key that accesses all areas. Once upon a time farmers would do their utmost in order to be able to send their child to university. They would make huge sacrifices because going to a good university meant getting a good job, which in turn meant that the child would be able to help his poor family, who would be anxiously waiting to reap the rewards for all the years of scrimping and scraping.

Just recently when the Gaokao scores were announced, a young man by the name of Xiong Xuanang, a Beijing high school graduate who got the highest score in the Beijing gaokao was interviewed on TV. Imagine that, out of all the thousands and thousands of students who took the test, he got the highest score. This means that he is already on track to achieve great things. He is obviously a thoughtful young man, as despite the fact that he comes from a privileged background, his parents are diplomats and he had access to the best educational resources, he worried that poor students would no longer be able to change their lives by going to university. The stakes have been raised so much that there is no way for poor students to reach that stellar bar. If rural students go to an ordinary university with an average reputation, they will not be able to get such a high paying job that it will change their lives. Added to that, for local students in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, the requirement for the scores they have to get for the Gaokao in order to be able to go to the best Universities in their city are lower than for a student from say Anhui province who is trying to go to Beijing University or Tsinghua University. The local students get priority, so you could have an average Beijing student that is able to go to one of those universities which are obviously amongst the best, if not the best in the country, whilst an outstanding student from a rural area would not be able to get in.