session #2 - october 16

[Natali Ramon]

I viewed Li Hongbin’s lecture on China’s  education inequality. When I traveled to China with a group of teachers, we spoked to high school aged students who seemed to very stressed out by the “gaokao”.  I feel like this lecture by professor Hongbin provided a lot more detailed that in retrospect allows me to better understand why these students were so stressed about an exam.  According to the lecture, college entrance exams can be fate determining and it comes as no surprise that students to great lengths to prepare for this momentous exam.  However, learning about the intricacies of the inequalities that are embedded in China’s system of education reminded me of the barriers my students face.  For example, Hongbin talks about how the test is administered only once a year, but kids from higher social classes often take the test more than once and they experience the benefit of scoring higher the second time they take it.  I also took note of the fact that the most prestigious institutions are located in urban centers.  This, of course, once more bestows another benefit to higher class children.  In thinking of this pattern connects to the Los Angeles context, it is worthwhile to note that Los Angeles houses some of the most prestigious institutions and it also has a great variety of social classes, including the working class, which my students belong to.  Nonetheless, because of gentrification, a lot of working class families are being pushed further and further away from the city.  With this growing patter, I feel that Los Angeles will someday resemble what patterns of contemporary China in which urban centers are  mostly reserved for the higher classes whereas rural areas are for the working class.  

[Natali Ramon]

When I traveled to China, one of the ways in which our cohort of teachers kept in touch was through WeChat. Having had some experience with this social platform, I was very interested to see the video on the latest developments in this social media application as well as its impact on the social fabric of China. It was especially striking to see that within the social reality of migration, people have found WeChat to be instrumental for keeping in touch.  And it is also quite interesting how the use of this application has by and large been influenced by the complexity of the system of characters. For example, since it is quite difficult to type in characters, people have turned to voice recording and emoticons to communicate.  It would be interesting to know how Chinese speakers notice that our social media interactions are shaped by the nature of our language.   

 

[clay dube]

The importance of gaokao (higher education entrance exam) has almost made it an English word. Some American schools are accepting gaokao scores in lieu of SAT/ACT. China Prep is documentary aired on PBS a decade ago, but I think it is still quite good.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/video/china-prep-video-full-episode-2/2722/

[Katrina Oh]

Once the CCP gained power, they undertook drastic reforms to improve agricultural and industrial productivity. One of the earliest policies was land redistribution, in which the government seized land from rich peasants and redistributed the land to poorer people. But when this policy had failed to boost production, Mao then established cooperatives. Farmers working on cooperatives were directed to share tools and farm animals with other farmers and each person would receive a return based on what they contributed to the project. But this too turned out to be inefficient and would be overturned by Deng Xiaoping. Starting in 1978,  Deng Xiaoping allowed peasants to keep the surplus from the land they worked, incentivizing them to work more. And unsurprisingly, agricultural production soared. 

I find it interesting how the Chinese Communist Party was still able to maintain control and have political legitimacy during the periods of economic stagnation and even downright famine. How did the Communist Party avoid a revolution around the time of the Great Leap Forward?

 

[Katrina Oh]

I did not know people had resorted to cannibalism during the famine. It is so upsetting that this happened, especially because it could have been avoided had it not been for poor government planning! It is doubly frustrating that the government bans individuals from speaking about this and denies any culpability of this event. I am curious about the history presented by the Chinese textbooks.

[Katrina Oh]

Before participating in this seminar, I had been under the impression that Chinese exports were the primary drivers of the Chinese economy.Visit any store in the U.S. or any home in the U.S. and you will find a pile, or even mounds of goods, manufactured in China. But according to the report from the Economist, private consumption has overtaken exports as the main driver of economic growth in China. As China's middle to upper-middle class grows, and their discretionary income increases, I wonder what kind of products China will manufacture for its domestic market or what kind of services China will offer its denizens.

[Katrina Oh]

After watching the mini lecture #4, my admiration for China grew: While I admit China is not a perfect country- after all, no country is- I was impressed by the Communist Party's ability to develop and articulate a clear vision (Belt and Road Initiative) for the country and its ability to carry out massive reforms in a relatively short amount of time. I was not aware that China had turned its attention to manufacturing higher-quality products more efficiently and harnessing innovation to drive further growth ("New Normal").

 

[Nira Sun]

Starting from decades ago, I believe, a lot of high schools in urban areas started building academic relationship with high schools in rural areas. It was a product of the China Western Development Strategy. This is to help the students from the western side of China, specifically, Xinjiang Province, to receive high school education in big cities mainly located in the eastern China. This educational experiment a strategy to lessen the ethnic conflict and increase the awareness of diversity in China. Positively speaking, Xinjiang Class successfully exposed students to the culture of their counter party. However, it comes along with religon issue that can ben enlarged through the process due the diversity of ethnic groups in Xinjiang. People tend to assume that everyone from Xinjiang practices Muslim and other Uyghur living habits.

https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/2603134/Research-Brief-No-11.pdf

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