Nearly 10 million students are taking the “gaokao” – the university entrance exam that is the sole determinant of admission to a university today (it began yesterday and ends tomorrow). When the students take the exam, they must also choose their university and their major. They get to rank three choices of university and major and will be accepted only if they meet the minimum required score for their chosen major and university. If they fail to meet the requirement for any of their three choices, they are offered a spot at a bottom-tier school that needs to fill seats. In that case, many students choose to wait a year and take the test a second time (or go abroad if their parents have money).
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/culture/2010-06/07/c_13337798.htm
Since universities are extremely competitive, it has lead to a sort of academic “arms race” where parents place a great deal of attention on their children’s education and spend more and more money on private schools and tutors. This has extended to three- and four-year-olds, who vie for spots in the best urban kindergartens. Some private kindergartens cost more than the average public university (1,000-2,000 yuan a month at many kindergartens versus 700 yuan a month for tuition and housing at Peking University, which is partly subsidized by the government).
http://abcnews.go.com/International/china-kindergarten-costs-college/story?id=10018640
Periodically stories come out about rising labor costs in China and the gradual relocation of low-cost manufacturing work to inland China and other countries in Southeast Asia. Although it’s hard to pinpoint a turning point in China’s shift from labor intensive, low-cost production of commoditized consumer goods to higher cost and more skilled-labor production of high-tech goods and services, recent labor disputes over low wages are one more important marker of this shift that has been underway in recent years.
There was an intense focus on improving labor rights in recent years, notably an expansive new labor law that went into effect in early 2008. Now the focus is turning to the wage levels of factory workers and low-skilled service workers, which have not kept up with inflation and have exacerbated the gap between rich and poor. Cities are raising minimum wages (an increase of 20% was recently announced in Beijing), workers at the largest electronics manufacturer announced two successive wage increases in the last month and workers who struck at a Honda factory in Guangdong returned to work after winning significant wage increases. The result is Americans will pay more for many everyday goods, but the working poor in China will get a fairer wage, and China’s economy will rebalance towards more domestic consumption and less export-dependent production.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/global/08wages.html?src=busln
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
