China and Chinese Education

China and its Education

As a native Chinese individual and who receives the traditional Chinese education, I am so proud of my country and also everything in my country. In other words, I am an absolute patriot. It's universally acknowledged that China has the longest history around the world, which is approximately five-thousand-year history. I have a deep affection for the ancient history of my country, and in those eras, thousands of elites were living in those times and help to support the respective emperors to build a great empire. Although in the late eighteenth century, and the beginning of the nineteenth century China was insulted and bullied by the foreign countries, China was not defeated and became even stronger after those wars. And that’s all because of the supreme elites, leaders, and also the joint efforts by people.

China has the most populous country in the world, the number is approximately around 14 million. Geographically, 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million square miles), China is the world's second-largest state by land area. China has covered China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia and has been characterized as a potential superpower. Economically, China has had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China has become one of the world's fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power parity. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and the second-largest defense budget. China is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BCIM and the G-20. With the introduction of a market economy in the late 20th century, China had rapid growth and is now predicted to be the world’s largest economy by 2040.

Today, China has the largest education system in the world. This system can be divided into three major parts: primary school (age 6-12), junior secondary school (age 12-15), and senior secondary school (age 15-18). Due to a compulsory education law passed in 1986, all Chinese children are required to go to school for a minimum of 9 years, from age 6 to 15. If a student passes a senior high school entrance examination after this, they may continue to study in either a general or vocational secondary school. (Evidence comes from the Ministry of Education of China)

The curriculum of these institutions is predominantly outlined on a national level by the Ministry of Education. Instruction typically occurs in Mandarin, but the local language is used if a school has a large ethnic minority population. And because of the various and distinct cultures are different from city to city, so there are hundreds of dialects that students used in their school, but typically, as mandarin is the official language in Chinese, all students at schools or in the classes are supposing to speak mandarin. Primary schools tend to focus more on general education, including classes such as moral education, Chinese language, and arts. Third grade introduces innovative research and the English language as new topics of learning. The junior secondary schools maintain teaching of general education while also incorporating more subject classes. This includes history, sciences, and a dedicated foreign language class chosen by the school from either English, Japanese, or Russian. The following senior secondary schools are split into two different categories, regular and vocational. Enrollment in regular high schools accounts for 56.2 percent of senior secondary students. At these schools, they continue taking a variety of required subjects and before 11th-grade students choose to be in either an art or science stream. At vocational high schools, there is a 4:6 ratio of academic subjects to specialty courses. A student is allowed much more attention to their career interest and is even provided with an internship that lasts for approximately a semester. In addition, nowadays, more and more Chinese students choose to study abroad, so this kind of education does not apply to them. Honestly, the senior secondary schools are designed for students who are willing to take the College Entrance Examination (CEE). And of course, due to China has a huge population, so the competition is really large, students usually have to bear many pressures from schools. Therefore, this can be accounted as another reason why currently, more and more students choose to study abroad, just because they want to avoid such large pressures.

To be honest, except those top universities in China like Tsinghua University, Peking University, or Hong Kong University, etc. most of the rest of the universities in China does not provide qualified higher education for students. Of course, not everyone can be admitted to those top universities, and I assume there are only and at most, 8 percent of students can be admitted to those universities. Undoubtedly, the education before universities is awesome, because every high school has the responsibilities to prepare all students to pass the CEE. Therefore, most of the college students in the rest of the universities are complaining that they don’t receive the better education with such high tuitions. Thus, this factor can be also accounted as another reason why more Chinese students are preferring to study abroad, especially the US, which equipped the best education around the world.

China is developing and growing in every aspect right now, and I can definitely see the huge changes in the following several years. This blog post reminds me the first English sentence that my English taught me and cannot forget, “I am a Chinese, I am so proud of China.” For sure, I will be amazed by the more advanced and developed China.