Images courtesy of Radio Free Asia Cantonese
Another diploma riot has broken out in China, this time at Jiangxi Fashion Institute (江西æœ?装å¦é™¢) and Ganjiang Institute of Techonology (赣江è?Œä¸šæŠ€æœ¯å¦é™¢) in Nanchang (å?—昌). As many as 10,000 students may have participated, burning a teaching building and attacking the luxury cars of school administrators. Other looting and violence occurred, though there’s a question as to whether it was carried out by students or perpetrated by third parties taking advantage of the situation.
The International Herald Tribune reports:
The paramilitary People’s Armed Police were deployed to contain the protests and at least five people were detained, the report said.
It said the protesters were ethnic minorities, including some 2,000 Uighurs from China’s Muslim northwest.
The only other source suggesting this is the notoriously unreliable Epoch Times.
According to the Washington Post, the riots were sparked by a CCTV report: “China’s state television aired a lengthy investigative report on Monday on how the privately run college had recruited about 20,000 students, well above approved quotas, in the past three years by promising them diplomas it was not qualified to award.”
The incident is similar to the Shengda Riots in June. The Economist explains how changes to education policy have led to universities launching semi-private side schools for those who can afford tuition but did not qualify for entry. Shengda lured students with the promise that the degrees they received would bear the name of Zhengzhou University, but then issued diplomas with the qualifier “Shengda”. Students were angry over what they, quite accurately, believed would make their diploma less impressive. The Economist also points to a CASS study determining Chinese households spend more on education than any other expense.
The students at the two Nanchang schools reportedly will receive recognized diplomas, though the schools violated quotas. Part of the problem is poor regulation of private schools by the state; but part of the problem is the power of certificates. Too often the certificate is held in higher regard than ability; this is why the students of Shengda complained about their diplomas accurately giving the name of their school – but its also why they paid and signed for the subterfuge to begin with. Consumers of education in China often shop for schools based on how it looks rather than whether it works. My experience in EFL in China supports this – English, and foreign teachers, are often used as promotional material, rather than educational. Students are routinely passed when they ought to fail because otherwise they will take their business elsewhere. Adult students will pursue English certificates because it will increase the chances of promotion – to a job in which they will never use it. Education is often a racket in China, but one in which many consumers are complicit.
1
By richard
Wow, three out of the four last posts are about protesters. Is there something going around this week?
This is unbelievably depressing on more than one front. Of course, at the center are the con artist salespeople who snooker the students into signing up. But as Dave implies, the students aren’t necessarily heroes – it sounds like they are buying their diplomas as opposed to earning them, which in turn makes me wonder whether these diplomas are worth the paper used to produce them. A racket indeed. Something’s rotten in the world of Chinese higher education.
October 27, 2006 @ 7:28 pm | Comment
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By Ivan
I’ve noticed subtle signs of various kinds of tightening of the screws in the Mainland over the past few weeks.
Blogspot is blocked again, since around a day or two ago.
As for those privately run colleges, yes they’re 100 percent “for profit” institutions (you won’t find a shred of dedication to education in any of them), and the worst thing is that there’s a new epidemic of state universities (often good ones, or they were good until recently) making bizarre “mergers” with new private colleges. This is of questionable legality (oh you know what I mean, if there WERE any law in China, this would be against it), and so are the origins of many of those new “private” schools: Often the whole point of building a “private” school is to be just another construction project, with land expropriated from the poor, and shitty construction, and lots of greased palms (and handjobs) all throughout the Communist Party.
And the consequence for the already dismal state of higher education in China, is that this epidemic of shady “private” schools (aka construction projects) is just dragging the standards of higher education even lower.
October 27, 2006 @ 7:53 pm | Comment
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By Shanghai Slim
“Education is often a racket in China, but one in which many consumers are complicit.”
That said it all.
This issue tears me in two directions. The students were not angry at the quality of their education – they were angry at the quality of their certificate. They were trying to game the system with a phoney diploma, and got angry when the scam didn’t pay off.
Yet, it’s certainly not the students’ fault that the society they are entering values certificates over achievement. From their point of view, they got screwed twice – first by a system that demands certificates, but is otherwise indifferent toward their education; secondly by cheating them when they tried to work around the issue.
It will be very interesting to see what this generation of students does when they are old enough to influence the system themselves. Will they do something about the problem, or be co-opted by the system?
Good luck to them!
October 28, 2006 @ 1:40 am | Comment
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By richard
Damn, that is one depressing comment, Slim. What a pity that I think you’re exactly right – and the thought of these students influencing the system in a few years…well, the vicious cirlce will just get more vicious.
October 28, 2006 @ 1:57 am | Comment
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By davesgonechina
@Slim: I was going to point out that the Jiangxi reports have said the school had simply overrecruited students beyond its legal quota, and the students in the Jiangxi case are not continuing the system, but ESWN found and translated another article. The money quotes:
It’s even worse than Shengda! In Shengda, the students were deceiving an unfair system. In Jiangxi, the students are deceiving each other. I have little sympathy for those who knowingly suck others into the same trap that screwed them. At least the student Lin contacted the press. Did he suddenly decide he could no longer do it, or did he have some ulterior motive (e.g. a fallout with school administrators?) When I have suspicions like that, I think I taste the cynicism these students must be drowning in.
October 28, 2006 @ 3:06 am | Comment
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By dingle
I agree with Shanghai Slim. I think there is more to this than just the private school racket. Students are beginning to crack under enormous pressures. Stress and depression in my opinion are rampant on university campuses. There is a hell of a lot of pent up frustration and in many a sense of despair. I think that students in many universities are just waiting for a reason to let all of those frustrations out. This event and the one in Shengda don’t surprise me at all. For me this is not so much about corruption as it is about young people starting to realize that they are being set up to fail.
October 28, 2006 @ 5:20 am | Comment
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By Ivan
Pardon me for depressing you all even more, but if you combine that “pent up frustration” with their having had their heads stuffed with lies and just plain officially-enforced-ignorance and puerile nationalist propaganda all their lives, it’s NOT any kind of recipe for any kind of orderly or peaceful democratic reforms.
But this generation of Chinese youths would be perfect fodder for another Cultural Revolution, if any maniac wanted to exploit them that way.
October 28, 2006 @ 1:03 pm | Comment
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By Shanghai Slim
Davesgone, thanks for the additional link.
Students selling each other out, perpetuating the educational fraud … d@mn, that is just extremely dismaying. What hope can there be for a system that starts young people out in this manner, especially if young people willingly participate. 🙁
October 28, 2006 @ 1:49 pm | Comment
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By davesgonechina
@Dingle: I agree about pressure. There’s been some indication that suicide and depression has been increasing significantly amongst students, a la Japan. As for young people being set up to fail, I think you combined that with the lack of critical thinking in the classroom and students are not equipped to try and affect change. As Ivan points out, the indoctrination leaves them without the tools to think their way out in a constructive way. The result is they use the same workarounds as those that exploit them, and perpetuate a cycle of abuse.
@Ivan: Another Cultural Revolution, or a 1911 re-run? One is manipulated by those in the government, the other overthrows the government. It could be exploited by either, depending which way the wind blows.
@Slim: I guess we can take some comfort in the belief that future leaders won’t be coming out of Jiangxi Fashion Institute anyway. The future leaders will have the primo certificates anyhow – Harvard MBAs and such. I can see how the students might feel forced into the pyramid scheme. These private institutions may have alot of students from well off families, but the truly well off will find their way to Beijing or Nanjing. These are probably true middle class – just making it into the lowest rungs of the financially mobile. It’s a tough place to be.
October 28, 2006 @ 3:05 pm | Comment
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By richard
Thanks for painting such a vivd if totally bleak picture, Dave.
October 28, 2006 @ 5:24 pm | Comment
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By Jeremiah
Students have always been a useful barometer of Chinese society and past student movements have often been, unsurprisingly, driven by a mix of motivations (ulterior and otherwise.)
In the imperial period, it was not uncommon for examination candidates to get rowdy, stage demonstrations, even riot during the provincial and national exams. Sometimes it was over government malfeasance, often it was just as much about not passing the exam or some perceived unfairness in the process.
During the New Culture era, students again took it upon themselves to speak out against the problems in China and to put forth new ideas to make the Chinese nation stronger. Did they do this because they were idealistic young patriots or because they were tired of being told what to do and wanted to marry their girlfriend? (See Ba Jin’s 家, “Family”)
Were the 1989 student demonstrators mad at corruption and their lack of ‘freedom’ or scared that new reforms meant they might not get the jobs to which their elite status should have entitled them?
Not that mixed motivations in student movements are entirely a Chinese invention. Did students in the 1960s join the peace movement because they opposed the Vietnam War and supported social justice in this country and around the world (yep) or because they didn’t want to be drafted (sure) or because ‘free love’ and ‘cheap drugs’ made for a good party (absolutely).
For the purposes of space, I’ve oversimplified the complex web of motivations in all of these movements, but the larger point is there almost always is a mix–the good and bad, the idealistic and the selfish.
To answer Shanghai Slim’s question about the future co-opting of these students, I’d suggest we ask ourselves what happened to the students involved in any of the movements listed above.
I’m not optimistic.
October 29, 2006 @ 2:01 am | Comment
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By davesgonechina
@Jeremiah: But the recent student riots/protests don’t constitute a movement. Unless there’s a great deal of internet chatter bringing it into focus, these are more or less isolated incidents. And there’s been little or no bringing forth of new ideas. If it resembles any of your examples, I would guess the Imperial ones but you know those better than I do. I do agree that there’s a barometer effect, but as for future coopting – frankly, the coopting is already there. Students are recruiting each other into pyramid schemes and demanding their certificates be disingenuous as promised in advertising. They’re already sunk into the system, which brings me to…
@Richard: I know sounds awfully bleak, but instead of youthful idealism followed by burning/selling out (which I think is more applicable to the 60s/89 examples), perhaps we’ll see them mature into experienced and educated people with a thirst for change and the power to do so? They’re young, they’ll change into who knows what?
Also, I must reiterate: these guys go to a fashion school in Jiangxi. And there are other factors as well; for example, two students are friends in high school but one doesn’t qualify for a top school and ends up at one of the private schools with funny diplomas. Whereas once before it’s goodbye after graduation, students now QQ each all the time. There’s more crossflow of information. And elite university students are getting fed up with things as well. A Chinese blogger quit Tsinghua because he found the computer science stuff to be rote crap. He wrote a very popular epic megapost called “The Smashing of the Tsinghua Dream – A Letter to Withdraw from Tsinghua” 清å?Žæ¢¦çš„粉碎—写给清å?Žå¤§å¦çš„退å¦ç”³è¯·. I’ve barely read a tenth of it, but he starts by talking about being scientifically curious as a child. You can lament that Tsinghua failed him, or you can celebrate that he decided to do his own thing.
BTW, his name is Wang Yin and I cast him as the CEO of Mimi in my China’s data mining future piece. So I do have some optimism around here somewhere…
October 29, 2006 @ 2:44 am | Comment
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By Jeremiah
You’re absolutely right about this not being a “movement” (apologies to Arlo Guthrie aside) nor am I saying a bunch of fashion students should be compared to the New Culture Movement. Bad choice of words. Let me rephrase this: ‘collective action’
October 29, 2006 @ 4:58 am | Comment