WHOO-HOO! I'm the very first poster! How fun! :D
Who's excited for this class and why?
~Gretel~
Maybe not just the first but the only? No way! Where is everyone? This is just spooky!
~Gretel~
Hi, I am excited to learn more about china.
Thats crazy. Good for you. My granny 73 and she struggles to operate a cellphone.hah
I'm looking forward to getting a new perspective on Chinese history. I've taken MOOCs before, but this time I'm taking it with 3 friends!
Pfft! A sofa? Nah... How bout a Mac book? :D
I can see my inbox is going to be overflowing in the morning but its bedtime in the states. Goodnight/morning/day my fellow classmates! :)
~Gretel~
Oh darn. :-/ me neither. ;)
~Gretel~
HEY! I resemble that remark! How dare you imply that... SQUIRREL! :D
Hi RiHa. :)
~Gretel~
I recently started doing Chinese calligraphy. I taught econ at univ. and live in Texas (US), and am interested in Chinese culture.
What do you think of the course, so far? My email is jimcgross15@hotmail.com
Nithipong-send me your email address and we can study together. jimcgross15@hotmail.com
Hello, I am from Hong Kong but now I live in the US. I just want to know more about my country! Thank you.
Hi! I'm studing my first year in college politic science, I'm from Mexico nice to meet everyone !
I'm from Mexico too, I want to learn more about history and economy of China and create solutions for Mexico
Ummm. Ok. First of all, it's great to virtually meet everyone. As for me (Gretel) I love history and yet I know very little about the history of China. I took Professor Zelikow's class on a history of the world since 1750 and loved it. I read a book a year or so ago called Life and Death in Shanghai and found it utterly fascinating. But that's the extent of my "knowledge" on Chinese history. So I'm looking forward to hopefully learning a lot more in this class from the lectures as well as the classmate like y'all.
Second... Forgive my ignorance but I don't see any lectures yet? The syllabus https://class.coursera.org/newchinahistory1-001/wiki/view?page=CourseOutline looks as though none will be available until next week? Is that correct?
~Gretel~
I see. Thank you, Leah. :)
~Gretel~
Hi Jay! Good to "see" you again! :)
~Gretel~
Hi Daniel, I'm from Mexico and now I'm in my first year of college. I'm studying Political Sciences or political studies in your case. Therefore maybe could be interesting if you could share me ideas, experiences, books titles, in the development of your career .Thanks I hope you can help me my mail is anabaez.95@hotmail.com
Hi everyone,
I am Florence from The Netherlands. I’m studying Mandarin and I am looking forward to learn something about China’s history too. This is my first Coursera course and hope to enjoy it.
Hi, Leora here from the United States. I was in high school when Nixon opened a long closed door between the US and China; I was fortunate to have a high school history teacher who offered a course in Chinese history. I'm retired from the education field (math and technology) and enjoy being a student again. I really like the the international nature of these online courses and am excited for the chance to study Chinese history with Chinese educators and students from around the world.
Richard! Another Chattanoogan? Hi Silver. I think we met briefly in UG in the genetics gang thread. I had no idea you were from Chattavegas! How many other coursarians live nearby....?
~Gretel~
You don't happen to live in the Tyner/Hamilton Place area do you, Silver? Just wondering how close we are as neighbors. :)
~Gretel~
Greetings Vic -- nice to see an age-peer from the US in the course -- My first on-line course - and my introduction to Chinese history - I too am challenged with summer activities. The lecture and the course material seem very interesting, and I think I will enjoy the course - hope you do too - Good luck --- George
Hi! I'm Susan from Ottawa, Canada. I'm very interested in the subject and since I'm retired I have time to indulge in learning about whatever I want. Good to meet everyone.
Hi, I'm Dolors, from Barcelona in Spain, where I teach Chinese History at Pompeu Fabra university. I'm taki g this course because its thematic approach to the history of China is very engaging.
Xx
Has anyone else tried to find the optional reading material for week 1? I went to the Columbia University Press website and did a search for the Ho paper/book and got a nil result.
Hello from George in California - I am very much looking forward to the course, and to learning about China - I am fascinated with being able to connect, on a learning level, with people over the entire world - good luck to each of you !
Hi, I'm Penny from the US ( San Diego, CA area). I'm looking forward to learning more about China!
Hi everyone, I'm Andrea in Charleston, South Carolina. I have a BA in History and a Masters in Public Administration, and I currently work in local government. I'm really interested in learning more about the modern history of China and how it has evolved. This is my first Coursera course, and I'm excited to get started!
Hello Everyone,
My name is Valeria Flórez, i'm from Colombia. I study anthropology, and since we study cultures, i thought it would be interesting to learn some details about Chinese history. It's my first time with Online courses, if you have some advice on how to approach it... Would be really nice to read about it on your comments.
Looking forward to start.
Valeria.
I'm Cayla from California. Mother of 5 and newly married. I am a student of archaeology and anthropology, undergrad (still), so working on my BA. I've been involved academically with my field since 2006 but I had to take a break from 2010-2012 due to children (my kids are all special needs) and divorce. Anyway, I decided to take this course to add to my ever growing knowledge :) I love academics, it's what I'm good at and I love learning about different cultures.
Hello everybody, my name is Melanie and I am from the United States. I am very excited about this course and I hope I do myself proud. Good luck to everyone, and happy studies.
Hello Everyone!
I am Laura from Germany. I just started my PhD in Paris on Public Policy and Gender Discrimination in Asia and Eastern Europe.
This is my first online class. And wow, it is great to have classmates from around the globe! I am looking forward to learn from your diverse backgrounds and knowledge and exchange ideas.
Best, Laura
I'm Jen, an American living in Hong Kong. It will be interesting to learn about Chinese history in a slightly more formal setting. Also interested to see how HK professors will conduct this course vs. the American & British professors that have taught the other coursera classes I've taken. The hourlong videos and short quiz deadline have already raised my eyebrows...
Yes, the cafeteria is a perfect place for the food and service. I have been there for only one time with my neo-institutional economics professor. However, it’s really expensive for a poor student at that time.
Hi,there! Theresa from Zhejiang. So glad to meet u here!
I am mohamed from syria , was born in france Very excited to know about china and its experience Goog to know you all
Why is wealth distributed more unequally
in some societies than others these two
long standing questions are at the heart
of much social science and yet in spite
of over a century of social theory the
answers to these questions still remain
largely on queue, unclear. 有大陆的同学吗?我不怎么明白这段的意思,能帮我翻译一下吗?谢谢了。
为什一部分人能富甲天下而其他人却不能?
为什么某些社会中的财富分布不均现象比其它社会更严重?
Please see the above for our Chinese translation of the two rhetorical questions posed both in our promo video and in our Week One lecture.
James
Hi all, 大家好!
My name is Marjolein (玛秋琳)I'm a Dutch engineer, now full time mother and part time Chinese teacher. Lived in Nanjing for more than 3 years and studied Chinese at Nanda and Nanshida. I still take classes to keep up, but it is difficult in a non Chinese environment. Needless to say I love China and especially the language : ) Btw, this course is great if you have a 1 yr old running around, can do little parts during the day.... Nice to meet you all! Any Dutchies or 南京人 out there?
Ya! You did a very good job, Ang Ai Lian, much better than mine to my foreign friend who studies this course with me here. Thanks! Mine is as follow (a very quick and simple translation)
The main ideas of the first page (P.61)
You guys, THANKS! I have no Chinese at all, so am very grateful for any translations and summaries you offer.
Hello, would like to volunteer, although i'm not sure if i'm a great help; non native speaker of CN (hsk 5 level), maybe I can try; studied Chinese for 3 years in Nanjing ( and still learning) but never did any translation work, I expect this to be quite difficult : ) If any one cares for Dutch though...
Wow! Your translation is perfect! Thanks very much, Ang Ai Lian!
Mine once again ... Not comprehensive ... To make some contributions, just to share my simple summary with you here. :)
Please read and give comments.
P.62-75
In this Chapter, it explains the relationship between geographic location and changes of the sources of students from Beijing University (national elite university) and Suzhou University (provisional elite university) in modern China (ie the establishment of PRC)
In general, the percentage pattern to get an offer to study in both universities is similar -- students from rich eastern parts are more, compared to the poor western parts of China. However, due to the implementation of a fair system of "universal basic education" after 1949, students from poor regions can have a higher chances to receive higher education and enter university. To cater for the needs of the youngsters from poor regions to enter elite university, both the central and the provisional governments set quota for them. As a result, even there's still a gap between the sources of students between various regions, its narrowed. In other words, the students are of diverse, compared to the period before 1949. Though the inequality of schooling still exists in Modern China, the situation has been improved - that's the occurrence of silent revolution from the poor rural regions in terms of the factor "geographic location".
In addition, according to the analysis, its not a must for the students from the rich economic regions to have higher capability and academic results. Students from inner poor regions can achieve better even their economic development is of average level. Besides, the learning atmosphere of these regions is better than that of the coastal economic regions like shanghai and Guangzhou since their primary and secondary education is better focused.
To sum up, the relationship between geographic location and elite education are diverse and complicated. The existence of unfairness may also due to the historical factor, refinement of economic system and governments policies, learning atmosphere as well as the different importance of various geographic locations in China.
Thank you but I will not call my writings a direct translation. Just sharing my notes. Hopefully more volunteers are coming forth in translating subsequent topics. :)
Yes, thanks for your sharing! :D Agree! Hope more volunteers will join. Actually I will be out of town next week, and quite busy these few days, so can't continue working with you. Hope you have new partners very soon. :)
Of course not, Sarah! Glad that you can let more classmates learn the ideas of this book!
I am not able to contribute to your efforts, but I want to extend my admiration and appreciation for what you are doing - thank you -- George
Wow! Thanks! Ai Lian and Chor Ling.
I have finished reading Chapter 2. Let me start with some basic ideas (background) first. For details, Ai Lian or any other fellow classmates, please continue. Please feel free to correct my points or add more to make the summary better and more complete. :-)
The hereditary residency permit system in China has been implemented since 1958. Due to the adoption of this system, unlike the western society, China's society and economy has developed into a unique entity. Though this system has not been strictly implemented in some provinces recently, its impacts on peasants population still exists. This Chapter mainly discusses the relationship between social mobility and the system of rural and urban populations in China with reference to the case study of Beijing University and Suzhou University.
To be continued .... (Need to deal with some urgent matters first. Sorry!)
Were any figures given for how large and how fast the increase in rural students was?
Next, standardisation of enrolment examination lowered the costs of university enrolment and examinations. All high school students need not have to leave their province to participate in the national examination and it was convenient. High school education was free, or low costs. Sometimes, the school provides subsidies to needy students. As such, these measures enable the students from the working classes to be tertiary educated.
What section needs to be done? Thursday, i have time to translate, but could use some help from Chinese friends to check afterwards : )
Thank you, tomorrow I can start ( with that section) i'll keep in touch!
My thanks also to all those who have been working on this translation. Your hard work has helped many others myself included get more out of this week of the course.
I've been looking forward to this course for some time. Hope to learn as much as I can so that next summer I may attend a summer program in Beijing.
Thanks !
Thank you, anon. The Fairbank and Goldman book was available from my public library. I am trying to wade through it now. I will probably not even finish before our class is over! (;-
Seriously, it is a well-written book and I am learning a lot already.
Glad this thread came up to the top with a new post and that I found it. Great resources, everyone. Thanks.
Phaidra, The first 2 coursesI took through Coursera were one-way like this. Lectures and quizzes only. I think it is the "easiest" way to go for those presenting the course, and you really have to rely on these discussion forums for interaction. I am currently taking a course with homework assignments and peer reviews, and I agree that I am getting a lot more out of that course. It is, however, more labor intensive and full of deadlines - 3 per week. It would be interesting to see what others think on this subject.
Grace, the course is "Arcjaeology's Dirty Little Secrets," and despite the. odd name, it is a fascinating course. There is a quiz, an assignment, and a peer assessment phase every week.
I love ADLS! Sad this is the last week :(
I am curious what is meant by "new methods" in the course title. There is no hint in the intro info.
I am assuming that the new methods refers to new ways of gathering and analyzing historical data that is then interpreted.
Hi all. Austin, Texas here. Looking forward to this course start for months.
Bill
Denton-area here. Looking forward to learning about the nation that may shift our worldwide outlook and economy in the future.
Isn't that the truth? I am taking the Aging around the globe course right now. I am closer to that category than to my teenage years! Even my son is out of his teens. (;-
Hi everyone, Xavier here 17 and from Australia
Title | Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding |
Author | Dorothy Ko |
Edition | illustrated, reprint |
Publisher | University of California Press, 2007 |
Foot binding was stopped by westerners like Christian missionary timothy richard, not Chinese.
Death by a thousand cuts was also stopped by Westerners, not Chinese. read Arthur Henderson Smith's book Chinese Characteristics, free on Google
Foot binding continued in the 20th century. My teacher in China said her mothers feet had been bound in early 20th Century
Interesting point. Foot binding was forced on a 2 year old. Foot binding is more like in Muslim countries today, a 10 year old girl has her clitoris cut. Foot binding ended because Westerners said it was horrifying to torture children. BTW, I went to the Academy Awards in Hollywood and women were wearing 9 inch heels
"They"(the Chinese) did not end it. Britain did. Western missionaries deserve thanks
Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet -- 'All the servers are in Beijing' -- he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national ...
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html
... do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of 'When China Rules the World,' he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing ... the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become. ...
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china.html
1. Land: the triumph of gardening, 2. Manufacturing: the victory of the historians, 3 Finance: the merits of a short leach, 4. Where china fits in
In China there is very little chance for farmer's kids to move into so called elite class. The current president of china is not coming from ordinary family. He came from very well connected inside the circle.
Judy: thanks. I do not have access to this book from our local library. Your pdf paper is very helpful. The pre-class assignment makes excellent reading. look forward to the class.
I was born and raised in New York. Still miss it. I visit very often because I have lots of family there. My child also went to college on NYC but now lives in China!
Title | China: A New Cultural History Masters of Chinese Studies, ISSN 1557-2161 |
Authors | 倬云·许, Cho-Yun Hsu |
Translated by | Timothy D. Baker, Jr., Michael S. Duke |
Edition | illustrated |
Publisher | Columbia University Press, 2012 |
After listening to the first four lectures, I am considering to in enroll. This seems to be moe of a course in statistics than in history as I have experienced it. I think that I understand that China's educational system has allowed more social mobility percentage wise, and less cultural transfer. I don't think that Chinese will replace English as the lingua Franca for the world, as the lecturer suggested. So far, am disappointed.
The word should have un-enroll.
Yes, I expected a more traditional approach to Chinese history.
Thank you for pointing out the word "NEW" to me. I am still disappointed in the first week's lectures and information.
Good idea!
You wrote this 14 days ago. Do you still feel the same way?
James,
I reserved two books from the public library and they have already been shipped so I should have them in a few days. They are just basic overviews of China's history. I realized I needed something like that as I began the reading for this class. I think I need some context for the discussion. I was amazed to listen to the lectures and find out how the data were compiled for the textbook--by hand, of course. I also was very admiring of the fact that the very early records used in the research are extant.
I did not realize the data presented in the lecture would be so detailed from reading the course description. But, I cannot say I am disappointed. It is pretty fascinating. In the US we have such a short timeline of history on which to focus compared to a country like China.
Not to mention, one of the first theorists I learned about when I majored in sociology--Max Weber--turns out to have been accurate about his observations of this aspect of Chinese society.
I have tried to view the courses I take on Coursera as jumping-off points, not always as self-contained. That puts the various styles of pedagogy in perspective for me and enables me to learn as much as I can.
Thanks. I am going to try to take it also--my first EdX course. So far I have only used Coursera.
I'm signed up for the EdX course too.
Where do I acces Lenski's book?
The statistics used in this course are given out of context and provide a very biased view. I discussed it in other threads. Disappointed with such presentations.
I have read the comments of the other students and have decided to stay the course. I have no intention of spoiling the course for others. If the course is spoiled for you, that is your doing, not mine. You don't have to listen to me, ANONYMOUS.
I sensed this from the very first set of lectures. That is why I started this thread. From what I am now hearing, my sense was pretty accurate.
There is a good stat course coming up on Coursera taught by a prof at Princeton. I took it last fall--my first class. I only audited but got a lot out if it.
Thanks for your comments. As I stated before, I am still here, but now I am disappointed with the lack of staff response to any issues that we students have with the course, question 3, propaganda issues, fact interpretations, lack of any subjective connection, and many others. I am now just going through the motions to glean what I can. Lost my enthusiasm.
I just enroll myself to this class. I didn't know about edX platform.
Many thanks
'The following quotation from an essay on English government by the scholar-editor Wang T'ao will suffice to show the appreciative understanding which Chinese thinkers of the last quarter of the nineteenth century had of the civilization of the West. He said:
The real strength of England lies in the fact that there is no barrier between the government and the governed; and that this close relationship between the government and the people forms the basis of national stability and solidarity. My observation is that the political life of England embodies the best ideals of our classical antiquity.'The data are very interesting as is the method of using"big data" in history. What is missing is more of an explanation of the analyses the professors did, why they chose the comparisons they did (e.g. US Ivy league schools vs. elite Chinese universities) and what some of the variables included (e.g. Wealth). I did not see this class so much as propaganda but lacking in providing of discussion, so that I could decide if the professors conclusions stood up to my scrutiny.
Also, I think that Dr. Lee weakened his presentation by throw-away comments such as "living in boxes." Then students end up reacting to an exaggerated comment instead of an overall point.
I think we could do with less ethnocentrism ourselves, but that this class could also do with a bit more rigorous explanation. I am still going to try part two--hopefully in the interim trying to amass a better background in Chinese history through reading.
Anonymous, From where did you get this number of 80,000 riots per year?
I was the one who started this thread after the first lectures. The last lectures started out to be interesting, but then deteriorated into information out of context without ant clarification. Unfortunately this course a was waste of any time I put into it. Ca n't win em all.
Your observations are interesting. I have long felt that happiness is very much a product of one's attitude. One can be very happy if one is satisfied with what they have and do. The poor in the West are often not very happy, because they see that there are people who have so much more, want have what they have, and are not able to get it, because of the inequalities of the system, and other factors. The important things are having food for sustenance, good health, shelter, and some satisfaction in your activities. There are too many people on this planet that do not have these basic assets. I think that history with it's reality has shown that there will always be inequality among people's and nations. That there needs to be some way that everyone should be able to obtain the essentials of survival and the security that they are likely to continue is a first step. Satisfaction and happiness is up to each individual after that. There is much more I could say, but that will come later.
Alfred, you are right that taking this course was not a waste of my time, after all. I have both read and contributed to the course forum. I have spent some time thinking about the information and interpretation of same in this course. The statistical facts are accurate. The interpretation of the facts is up for grabs. Also, there needs to be some subjective information to flesh out the statistics. Please read my comment to John Lawrence, above.
Numbers, in themselves do not lie, but can be applied in different ways, contexts, tables, and graffs to tell both truths and LIES. Unfortunately this course didn't give me much of an overview of China.
The problem here, I think, is that the reasons for the way the analysis was done were not sufficiently explained. Also the variables used--or the choice of those variables--were not explained.
I do not have a problem with the data, per se, though. I am amazed at its existence(the older school records, for example).
As far as PKU and the missing data--for 1988 and for another whole decade as I recall--many students noted the data were missing for 1988 because of Tiananmen Square. They were taken back by the professor's silence on the reason.
It must be interesting for you to have your "feet in both worlds," having grown up in Mainland China and having emigrated in 2002. Have you become a US citizen? I do think that there is resistance to hearing messages that impinge on one's world view (or worse, play on prejudice) and that accounts for some of the criticism of the course. However, there are legitimate methodological and philosophical issues that have been raised. It is unfortunate that the professors did not comment on, or at least acknowledge, them.
As far as background on China to bring to the class, the course description could be made clearer, stating that the class is not an overview of Chinese history and perhaps suggest some sources to consult before taking the course if the student wanted to do so. It is pretty hard to try to learn what is presented here and read background at the same time.
PS I don't think there is any one way that "non-Chinese view China," by the way. There are ranges of knowledge and openness--but that is true of any academic endeavor. Asking questions does not necessarily translate to an unjustifiably negative view.
I would like to see the Chinese characters for the list of Chinese required texts. Thanks.
Anon,
We are not going to be tested on optional reading. I am having a hard time with the reading also. I am trying to get an overview of what I am reading. It is slow going for me, too. Don't let what others are getting out of the reading intimidate you. You can use their observations to augment what you are understanding. I am going to need a lot of augmentation of understanding!(;-
Hello all,
I really enjoyed this first class; afterwards I was wondering; what about social mobility of women? My personal interest goes out to emancipation of women in China and was wondering if anyone can shed some light on this? Any reading suggestions? I believe there were women taking the imperial exams... Furthermore besides marriage how did women get a bigger share of the wealth or climb the social ladder?
Hello Wolfgang,
Thank you for your reply! True, in general women were not allowed but there are stories of taking the exams dressed up as men ; ). I was wondering if there were more exceptions and what proportion of women would take the exam or was educated in the mentioned texts. Yes, as there was much inequality between men and women in China in the past, I think modern (urban) Chinese women are sometime more emancipated than there Western counterparts!
No, it was not a play, I think I read it in an article when I was doing research on women, too bad I forgot where I read it ; )
You mention South Korea. Can you expand a bit on the present status of women in South Korea?
Actually the 1cp also had a positive influence on the equality issue. Because girls ( that are born) lack the competition of male siblings and therefore have more recources allocated to them and receive better education hence more social mobility ( see article posted before ). i believe there is even a shift in big cities that couples prefer girls.
Thank you, that would be something to look forward to!
Yes, I agree to Phyllis' points in her two posts above. One typical example is Cixi. Through marriage, she finally got power and (was forced) to start the Late Qing Reform. Its said that she played an important role in the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. What she did was just to limit the provincial power and prolong her rule. Ironically, the educational reforms of the Late Qing Reform created a new type of intellectual who was greatly influenced by western ideas like liberalism and democracy which indirectly paved the way to women's emancipation.
~ general opinions
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, yes, I agree with you that the May 4th movement was the start of women's liberation.
Anyone who is interested ; " Concubines and Courtesans, Women in Chinese Erotic Art" by F.M. Bartholet is an interesting read and has beautiful art.
I believe that quite some elite women were educated but I have no idea about proportions, I think this is not documented. One of the reasons that I found for educating women was to raise good sons.
My question is in general not in those centuries; the reason for asking is because I am interested in this topic and was hoping for some interesting examples ; ). Later in history there are ( other ) ways for women of moving along the social ladder....
Yes, it's true! Due to the one child policy, lots of mainland couples came to Hong Kong to give birth to their babies and got citizenship. Though the HKSAR imposed laws to stop those parents who dont have hk identity from coming to hong kong, it has caused conflicts between mainland and Hong Kong politically, socially, economically .... since more and more mainland kids have been using the resources of Hong Kong. For instance, as they are allocated school places in north district (a district in Hong Kong which is close to Shenzhen), some local kids (around 6-7 years old) have to study in another district by coach. Local parents are extremely dissatisfied. Socially speaking, due to the different cultures, its difficult for mainland kids to adapt to the Hong Kong environment. Their self-esteem may be low because of their poor academic achievements or difficulty to make friends ....
Lots of problems can also be found in the mainland which leads to numerous tragedies. Partly due to the traditional ideas of "son preference" .
Frankly, though we are living in a better/fairer world, social mobility for women is still a current controversial issue to worth discussing. Or, I think gender discrimination still exists. Like the opinions above, even women can climb up the social ladder, they / we have to sacrifice a lot. The opportunity cost is still high.
Yes, with reference to the link I shared, "it restricts urban couples to only one child, while allowing additional children in several cases, including twins, rural couples, enthic minorities ....". There're both positive and negative effects. :-)
From a TV program shown in hk, (like the information given in the above link), its said that the PRC government had overemphasized its great achievements. In my opinion, it really can help solve the problems that come with overpopulation, but it has also led to lots of tragedies from forced abortion. Apart from fines, ".... Women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort .... women in their 9th months of pregnancy .... Having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth". Such cases are still very common at present.
In the TV program, it also revealed that some baby girls were left behind and became orphans.
Positive effects - Broadly speaking, 1. Population growth rate reduces 2. Lead to advancements in economy 3. Then, enhance sustainable development and people's quality of life .....etc, etc
~ my 2 cents again
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and information, it is very interesting to read!
Yes, even nowadays, common gender stereotypes or role expectation still exist in some societies like Hong Kong. Under the influence of globalization or western ideas, people treat women more equally. Nevertheless, people (or males) still expect women to have certain qualities or behaviors. For instance, women should do housework and take care of kids (after work), they should be content, detailed-minded, meek, mild ......
Based on gender-stereotyped ideas in Hong Kong, generally speaking, men should earn a living, be good at mechanics, independent, ambitious, generous ....
I wonder if such role expectations are originated in the Analects and Book of Rites!?
I thought this course is about history of new China. but in the part 1 , the majority of time spent on how the research from some Phd person come up to a certain result. This is like a research paper, not like a history telling. I hope that part 2 is more interesting.
Shias Wang and Kim,
I share your enthusiasm. Shuai Wang, I think learning about China is a great opportunity but so is the opportunity for Mainland Chinese students and others to live outside of China and for others to live in China. In fact, my son is living in Shanghai, now. A few decades ago this would have been impossible. He has visited several other countries in Asia, including Vietnam. Again, this would not have been possible decades ago. These online classes give us a tremendous opportunity to interact, even if not in person.
And, Kim, even though the US and Canada are neighbors, I live on the east coast of the US and have only been to Montreal and Quebec City.
Howard,
Read your profile. Great that you are going to Duke for your PhD. My husband did his grad work at Duke, I at Chapel Hill.
What will you be studying? We enjoyed living in that area. I actually was back at Duke a few years ago for a seminar for another grad program.
Using this Wikipedia page as a basic guide, I downloaded the four books and five classics from Project Gutenberg and counted the number of unique Chinese characters in each one. My results look like this:
| ChunQuiPe | 春秋 | 1934 | | DaXueZhangJu | 大學 | 868 | | LiJi | 禮記 | 2937 | | LunYu | 論語 | 1350 | | Mencius | 孟子 | 1894 | | ShiJing | 詩經 | 2844 | | YiJing | 易經 | 1360 | | ZhongYong | 國風 | 1130 | | Total | 4882 |
I couldn't find a plain text of the "Book of Documents".
Hi Lu Yi,
I don't know about the variants you mentioned, but if they are just variants of the same character they are not really different characters. One of the files is in Big-5 format and the others are in UTF-8, but the 'Big 5' will not alter anything. The Gutenberg texts are not in the 'simplified characters' used in modern-day mainland China.
Approximately one thousand of the characters are only used once in the texts and about 650 are only used twice. The top ten most used characters are (number indicates number of uses):
1. 之 9633 2. 不 6374 3. 也 6324 4. 子 4993 5. 而 4230 6. 以 4113 7. 其 3910 8. 曰 3793 9. 有 3237 10. 人 3224
ZhongYong is 中庸,not which is GuoFeng
The ZhongYong file says at the top
中庸章句 (zhong yong zhang ju)
Does anyone have a better source for the plain text versions of these files? It was kind of confusing getting them from Gutenberg/Wikipedia but this was the best I could do.
for each of these charactor, it can mean several meaning depending on the context
Sure but it's only one written character even so.
Was it more a case of passing on 'elite knowledge', in essence those that exhibited such knowledge were part of the 'in crowd' or was there some practical use, in real terms, for the knowledge gained ?
I think from what Professor Lee said, it was both useful for social advancement via the Imperial Exams and for passing on elite cultural knowledge. The vocabulary would also help in carrying out the duties of your civil administration job. 'I guess they should memorize the passages because it will give them knowledge of complex Chinese characters.'
Hi Andrew, here are my answers to your questions:
A1 :First, ancient Chinese intellectuals generally dedicated their whole life to political ideals, say “self-cultivating; family-regulating;state-ordering;then the land great governed.” (from a vital Chinese book named THE GREAT LEARNING) Chinese classical texts covers a lots of fields, from math to philosophy, and the more time you read it, the deeper you dig, the more you will learn.
Second, in ancient China , intellectuals have higher class level than others,such as peasants,labours and traders. The more knowledge you get,the more respect you get.
Third, “a good scholar can become an official.” (from The Analects of Confucius, the most effective Chinese classical book) Through education and scholarship achieving ,even 'a son of a cattle doctor' could be the prime minister.
So, knowledge and life value, high class level, and official position , that`s what they( urged to )achieve.
A2: Elite knowledge , I suppose. Because the texts in traditional Chinese education are more about moral cultivation.
A3: Ancient Chinese intellectuals tended to use highly concentrated word to express endless meaning. So massive characters needed to be created and learnt. That`s why a long sentence can be very short in Chinese.
Hope to help you.
I don't know how Chinese characters 'work'
Andrew,
Chinese characters are either words themselves or building blocks from which words are made, somewhat like letters in alphabetic languages; that's all. For the purposes of the current discussion, you don't need to worry about how they historically came into being or how they are written by hand.
The following is an oversimplification and not 100% accurate, but maybe can still help you understand the point.
'A' is a letter in the English language that has a certain meaning when standing alone. It also can be part of other words, such as 'allow' or 'although' which may not have a meaning related to 'a.'
Similarly, the Chinese character 天 (pronounced approximately 'tian') can have a meaning when standing alone, in this case maybe 'heaven.' But when the character is used in a word, such as 明天 (pronounced approximately 'mingtian') it becomes part of that word, which may or may not have a meaning closely related to the component characters. In this case 明天 means 'tomorrow.'
Hope I have not confused you more. Don't get stuck on this business about characters versus words. It's a very small point for purposes of understanding the main ideas in these first week's lectures.
I live in Yunnan and would be remiss if I didn’t post something here about our most famous dish, cross bridge rice noodles/guoqiao mixian/过桥米线 and how it relates to the Imperial Examination System.
This delicious dish is still widely eaten here today and is a combination of rice noodle soup and several other ingredients, including a quail egg, some meat, and vegetables.
Several legends exist as to its origin, all anecdotal. One such popular one is that a scholar isolated himself from his family every day in order to study hard for the Imperial Exam by going to the less used side of Nanhai Lake 南海湖 in Mengzi county 蒙自县, south of Kunming 昆明。
His wife wanted to bring him something hot and nourishing to eat, but if she carried a pre-made soup that far, it would get cold. She found that if she made a boiling hot meat broth in a thick clay pot and allowed a thin film of fat to form on top, it would stay warm. She carried it, along with some separate rice noodles, assorted sliced meats, maybe an egg, and thinly sliced vegetables when she went to see her studious husband each noon.
She added the other ingredients to the pot of hot broth after arriving and they quickly cooked from the retained heat. He could then eat it all quickly, so as not to waste precious time and return to his studies well fed. That’s the way it is still made today; the items are brought to the table separate and combined just before eating.
One day the scholar asked his spouse the name of this new concoction and, since she had carried it across the bridge over the lake, she told him it was “Cross Bridge Rice Noodles.” The name stuck. You can try Cross Bridge Rice Noodles next time you’re in Yunnan.
Chinese do not want non-Chinese to join in Chinese culture or language. That is the real significance of the Great Wall. It is not just a physical structure
I understand there are actually two separate languages in China, Mandarin and Cantonese. Is that correct? These are not dialects of a common language is my understanding. Are "loan words" words from English being incorporated into both of these languages? How extensive is this practice, and does it affect both languages similarly? Here in south Texas, so many of us speak some, but not fluent, Spanish that it's been termed 'Spanglish'. In some conversations you can here speakers go back and forth between languages in every sentence.
Hi Gleb,
Thanks very much for your explanation. Much appreciated, I start to understand the differences in Chinese language.
If you are immersed in the environment of any specific language, you can learn it easily. You say English is easier to learn? Are you kidding? I've been learning English for more than two decades, and my competence is still like what Professor Lee said in the lecture.....just that of a 12-year-old native speaker! I know less than 4000 words, and if you speak too fast I cannot follow it!
One important factor to consider is China's past 4 decades of international banking and infrastructure efforts in Africa, Oceania, SE Asia, The Americas, the Middle East...Whereas India has relatively fewer inroads reaching towards global resources which will prove essential in the continuation of economic/industrial growth and living standard increase.
Data for Chinese foreign investments in the last 8 years:
http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/china-global-investment-tracker-interactive-map
Hi all, I am an Italian man living in China for the past 10 years and I speak fluent Chinese. Chinese will never be the lingua Franca like the professor suggested for the following reasons: 1. Entertainment English is an international language because of Hollywood movies etc., Chinese dramas are awful. Even chinese people hate the. And download Americn Movies, or Japanese or Korean. 2. Adaptability Chinese language is based on characters. You can't just simply create new words like in English or European languages. It cannot adapt to new ideas and concepts. 3. Difficulty Statistically a big chunk of the global population speaks chinese, but that is just because the population of china is huge -1.3/1.4 billion, combined with the Chinese diaspora overseas who learned the language from their parents or grandparents. Nevertheless, Chinese language is extremely difficult to speak. I have met many people from neighboring places like Korea or Japan who still speak very poor Chinese after years in China. English is definitely a lot easier to learn.
Chinese is not worth learning because Chinese are anti-nonChinese. They are like Japanese: if they realize you can speak Japanese they do not want to talk to you. Chinese do want westerners to attempt to learn, so Chinese can make $ selling language classes books etc. you could get 3 PhDs in hard sciences int the time it takes to become fluent in Chinese Read this http://www.economist.com/node/10180807
Yes
from Japanese, another cool one is 人力車
man powered vehicle or, jinrikisha, or 'riksha'
As the person who wrote the original post I thank everybody who has contributed to this thread.
I’d like to share some additional thoughts.
I’m a teacher of English but still dread the idea that this language, together with globalization, might possibly ‘destroy’ other languages and consequently other cultures, etc. If you think about it that doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Look at the sameness in the clothes worn across continents. And this is just the beginning.
I have a theory that the pre-eminence of English is not due to trade and commerce but mainly because of American and British films and music. The entertainment industry is the modern-day imperialist. For example, in India anti-Hindi southerners have slowly accepted the language from the north because of Bollywood. In Laos it is a similar situation vis-à-vis Thai.
For Chinese to become a global language it will have to change, to simplify itself, to borrow words liberally from other languages. This is what makes English so dynamic and the fact that it adapts itself to different regions. Today how many varieties of English are there? Just look at the language settings for English on Microsoft Word!
The analogy that I’d like to offer for Chinese in its present form is this. Imagine that we didn’t have the figures 0-9 and that for each number we had a new character?
Traditionally, a westerner would be executed for studying Chinese, executed by public decapitation. Chinese refused to change this until after 2 wars with British. The law has changed to allow Westerners to study Chinese but Chinese are still fiercely anti - westerner and anti-non chinese. In that context it would be foolish for non chinese to learn. However, the truth is not so easy to swallow and not many commenters here will be able to admit the plain truth of this post. A society that is very unwelcoming will not find that it's culture or language is welcomed by others. The Great Wall is the symbol of China's attitude, and far more than a physical structure. And all this has been seen before. Japan developed economically starting in 1860s. No non Japanese can speak Japanese even in 2013 because Japanese attitude of xenophobia. The difficulty of Chinese language is a small problem. The real problem is motivation: if you learn language of a xenophobic people you soon realize it is pointless, like trying to join a club that will never accept you as a member. French language has had the same history. France developed economically very early but French history of rudeness to non French has caused it's language to never be adopted. Spanish is the opposite. Latinos are friendly people and non-Latinos feel welcomed in Latino culture and when learning Spanish or Portuguese. American society is an example of a society that is open and welcoming. There was a Chinese US Army General over 30 years ago. Chinese have held every political office - Mayor, Governor, Cabinet - but the White House. American open-ness and open-ness by other English-speaking nations is what caused English to become the dominant language. In sum, because of Chinese xenophobia, and not because the language is hard to learn, Chinese will never spread throughout the world, like English. I lived in China and Taiwan 10 years in Beijing, Shanghai, FuZhou and also in Taipei in the nation of Taiwan
Decidedly, unfortunately, it is not better than that. It is a phenomenon how the cells can be blue and yet the organism red, but the world over the people are not representative of their countries oligarchies/political parties/ruling class. When we talk about Global Language, I see a theme of thought that reads this as, "a language everyone speaks" rather than "a language that controls the globe."
Yes! The existence of Singlish (Singapore), or Subcontinental English are good determiners of the flexibility of English as a Global Root Language. When asked whether Country X's People speak English, Vietnam or Indonesia or China for example, the answer is often "yes and no". English succeeded as a Global Language because of its ability to be broken and transformed to the grammatical, illustrative and expressive tendencies of the speaker. Is "Yu Hav Pen?" --- "No Hav" an English conversation? Can be. It isn't Hindi.
International English is the Lingua Franca. We agree on vocabulary and...thats about it.
"Went river/ Big problem/ Your Friend/ Now come/ Come" Good enough for me when it was needed.
川。来。問題。友達。今。
Chinese already is a Global Language. When I read this discussion I notice a thread of thought that reads the term Global Language as "a language that everyone speaks" rather than, "a language that controls the globe". Language has always functioned as both a way to communicate within one's interest group and as a way to exclude the ears of those beyond the river also vying for the same resources.
Ever played soccer against a team who all speaks Spanish but can understand English? Much more difficult to orchestrate tricky plays on them than it is for them to decieve and surprise you.
The most likely situation, as others above have hinted at, is that Chinese will remain inaccessable to large amounts of non-Chinese people. The New Great Wall of language will seperate those that control resources and finance from those who work for the controlling industrialists and financeers. A Chinese official overseeing a research institute in Geneva, speaking German, English and French, and then reporting the fruits of the program to Beijing in Puthongua is what we are looking at. Chinese energy companies with facade names like 'Liberty Coal and Electric' will strip mine Tennessee with American labour, export on Chinese ships from Chinese funded ports, build natural gas lines and FRACK the Dakotas without the general population even questioning or caring where their paychecks come from. Board meetings in Puthongua, paychecks in English. The Chinese already milk New Zealand cows, import Australian ore, chop down Laotian forests, and mine African minerals. Most people are not the wiser that this is not a future, it is a present situation that is waxing. When the US defaults on loans and China demands a chunk of flesh in the form of oil concessions, of non-intervention pacts as it pushes further and further into Japanese controlled waters, of dissarmament...
What we are looking towards is a different type of order than what most of us concieve of as globalization or the 'globalized world', which is basically the loose knit remnants of the fallen British Empire. Purposeful exclusion at the very worst and apathetic exlusion at the very best is how the top tier of global finance, power and politic will function in the Chinese era.
Within the current political borders of China, the People's Party has already shown how it will deal with a bewilderingly large and diverse population (China is extremely diverse ethnically, linguistically, economically, religiously); that it is not necessary for all people to be educated, wealthy, healthy and socially mobile. It is quite enough for 10% of 1 Billion people to ride the wave of flourishing supported by, and shared in margin by, the other 900,000,000 Chinese, Why not the other 700,000,000,000 global citizens?
Incentive is everything. There is little incentive, from a Chinese perspective, for vast numbers of global citizens to speak or understand Chinese and a large incentive for key companies or representatives to speak English/French/German/Swahili/Arabic/Etc. Perhaps knowledge of Chinese will help you or your children to score better on the exams.
there is a small section of Indians sho speak Sanskrit. there is a Sanskrit news on the radio too. there are fully sanskrit schools where rigorous training is provided. the most popular use of tge language though, is in the form of poems, hymns, prayer etc in a typical Hindu household. all traditional functions, ceremonies related to birth, marriage and death are still performed in Sanskrit.
Indirectly, it is given rise to most Indian languages and so enables speakers of different languages to follow each other without too much difficulty in understanding each other!!
Read the article by mark kitto. The link is above
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/
Mark Kitto article
Japanese have never welcomed foreigners and that is why the "learn Japanese trend" faded away. During the Edo period in Japanese history (up to 1853) any foreigner who landed on the beach was, by law, to be decapitated immediately. That general attitude to foreigners remains today
@Hokkun Pang
The Professor has made a very important statement about the future of Chinese as a global language at the beginning of the course. The issue of language stirs strong emotions. The short point here is that it is a matter of time before the dominance of English as a global language would face challenges. The sheer numbers tell their story. The native speakers of Mandarin are estimated at 955 m, those of English 407 m, those of Spanish 359 m and those of Arabic 293 m. According to 2001 census of India, 41.03% of the Indian population were native speakers of Hindi. According to the 2011 census the population of India stood at 1.21 billion. Native Hindi speaking population should be around 496m. Chinese as well as Hindi are knocking at the door of the world community to occupy their rightful place.
It is a fact that literacy rates in India are low. Under British rule, in 1901 the literacy rate in India was 5.35%. In 1951 soon after the British left, it was 16.67%. At present it is 74.04%. To meet with the demands of the situation, there is a three language formula under which apart from the regional language, the students in the school are taught Hindi which is an important link language as well as English.
@ Christian Husby
It is true that it would take a lot for any other language to become a global language. Many economic and geo-political advantages the English speaking people have enjoyed are not available to China or India. A claim is being made that in India many people use English language. It is estimated that about 4% of Indian population use English. This percentage would in all probability be lower for China. People use English as the second or third language.
It is a fact that English dominates the Internet at the present. The giant internet companies do not accept the sovereignty of other nations over their own people. However, they act as the extended arm of the U. S. Government as the recent developments indicate. This will result in the fragmentation of the Internet as we know today.
When we talk of classical languages, we say that they are meant for a minuscule elite. In the context of this global village, the English language is also the language of the elite, more so in several Asian and African countries. The question here is to give the languages spoken by the teeming masses of Asia their rightful place. A language meant for a small elite is ultimately used to exploit the masses.
I think it does make sense due to UK/ English students being native to the language and as you said HK and Mainland not their word knowledge is less due to the importance of the second language at the time of their studies. Teachers do not really encourage extra reading of different literacy were the students are able to increase their own dictionary. It doesn't only happen with Chinese studying English but also with other cultures studying a different language e.g. Germans studying French, Spanish or which ever language you choose. Nowadays the student is responsible to increase their word knowledge by themselves if they wish to compete with native speakers. We assume basic is enough, but in actually it's not. Their are still a lot of misunderstandings by the barrier of language, not only in speech but also in the cultural aspects, for instances jokes or even in the business world. Therefor I think that the teachers could creat a better environment for their students to practice and keep motivated in acquiring more words in their repertoire by increasing the level of literacy. Well that's my opinion.
I understand and can agree with the evidence indicating a greater degree of social mobility in imperial china vs the west due to the exam system. But wasn't that essentially mobility within the structures of government, ie civil service? Does it also translate into economic freedoms to establish a business, invent and innovate and advance outside of the governmental hierarchy. ...Ie why did china not develop an innovative free market economy well before the west did between the renaissance and the industrial revolution? Hopefully these topics will be addressed in future lectures or alternatively through this discussion thread.
I just submitted the quiz for week one, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. A nice blend of history and socio data. I also managed to read the optional book's pages, which gave an even nicer insight into the history behind the data.
Overall, I'm enjoying this course, and if the next few weeks are anything like this, I know I will leave impressed with the overall course (and will come back for part 2 and 3).
It's been really handy too, as I've gotten back into the habits of note taking and studying.
Thanks HKUST
YES! And I went back and forth on that percentage one but did fine... Onward to week two!
Well done! Were you confused by the "percentage of the population of adult males" and the "percentage of the population of exam-level educated adult males"? I went with my gut (I do exams closed book then check my answers afterwards) Really enjoyed the content in week one. Can't wait for week two to begin... I wonder when the lectures become available...
Brief but interesting review of the competitive schools of thought (schools/doctrines/philosophies). The brevity is a bit of a mislead without delving into the applicable views of some of these thinkers and their visions of how to shape Warring States China. This topic is course length and career depth. If you truly wish to understand this conflict of thought, why it arose and how it eventually amalgamated into modern Chinese thought, reading all of the representative primary texts is a must.
I have participated in a fun exercise to lighten the reading load; each student (or teams of students depending on the number of participants) chooses a school to support. A moderator then asks questions to the panel on how to deal with certain situations in the State (e.g famine, pestilence, an aggressive neighbor gearing for war, an opportunity to trade with a weaker kingdom, etc.) in as much detail as possible to simulate a true context. (Note that this moderator position is best suited for those who have already a general knowledge of the time period and the interaction of these schools in context). The panel then debates these issues with annotations of their respective texts. In an ideal world, the moderators questions relate to historical issues that actually occurred and then, after the debate, the true course of action / results of the scenario is revealed.
One more thing; Chuang-tzu is most definitely a Taoist, if one is willing to categorize him, and his self titled text (Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (A.C. Graham ~ recommended translation) is one half of the core of true philosophical Taoism. Avoid anything labeled "Taoism" besides the Tao de Ching and the Chuang-tzu if your interests are in the role Taoism played in Chinese political thought. The rest is generally folk knowledge, mythologies and melting pot stories of immortals and elixirs. Fascinating but pollitically irrelevant. Philosophical Taoism was less of a force in shaping China and more of a reaction to the dangerous and labryntine political landscape of the Warring States era.
Also, please note that the context that gave birth to these schools predates the Coursea material by about 1600 years. To over simplify, Confucianism is the basis for the education system we are studying here.
Cheers
To understand the diversity of the schools, you would need to know the role of Confucianism, which arguably destroyed China's cultural diversity (This is a highly debatable topic).
The period of philosophical diversity (known as the '百家争鸣') was a feature of the spring and autumn period. However, in the Han dynasty the Confucian school secured complete dominance through the support of the emperor Han Wu Di. Arguably, Confucianism appealed to the ruling class due to its emphasis on morality and obedience. In an event known as '独尊儒术,罢免百家', most of the other contradictory schools of thoughts were either destroyed or modified to protect Confucian's position. For instance, all the traces of the Mohist were entirely eradicated. We would not even know of its existence until some of the text was accidentally rediscovered over a thousand years later. The ancient Taoist school of Huang Lao which emphasis on rationality was also destroyed, leaving behind only the zhuang lao approach which is more sentimental.
Tao, meaning "Way", traditionally refers to the way/laws/tendencies of the Universe, a mystical root of existence. Today, however, everyone seems to be finding their own 'way'. There are many Taoists and many Taoisms in modern China. There are Taoists predicting fortunes with bamboo divination sticks, casting magic stones on the street, mixing health elixirs, reading fortunes, selling charms, burning incense; there are golden idols of countless Taoist Immortals (diversely empowered semi-mythical figures akin to modern day comic heroes or Ancient Greek demi-gods); there are Taoist temples where people go to prey for healing, for the health of loved ones, for wealth, for success; There are Taoist holy mountains (e.g. Hua Shan in Shaanxi Province) that, on one peak, sustains a small commune of 3 taoists living off of meagre self grown vegetables in austerity and concurrently, on the main peak, hordes of Chinese in business suits and golf shirts taking thousands of digital photographs, drinking CocaCola, listening to theme music from tower speakers, and praying for more money before heading back down the mountain on a trolley car. They are all, if asked, Taoists.
The original core of philosophical Taoism, as I mentioned in an earlier post about the Zhuangzi and the Tao te Ching, has all but extinguished as an organized way of thought and life in modern China. The California Taoism is more closely related to an amalgamation of Chan / Zen Buddhism and the Zhuangzi/Tao te Ching philosophies.
Don Treiman’s point is well-taken, while the data we have for the social origins of successful civil service examination candidates in late imperial China and students in the Ecole Normale Supérieure 1868-1941 and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration 1945-1951 are really not at all the same, STILL, the admission rates in the century from the mid nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century for students from the French upper and upper-middle class to elite education may be roughly similar for successful civil service examination candidates in late imperial China.
Our statement on slide 16 of Week One Chunk Four that Western educational and examination systems have “not achieve[d] the same rates of social mobility” is based more on a comparison of the number of successful students from poor and lower middle class families. Our focus in Week One, in other words, as we discuss explicitly in Weeks Two, Three, and Four is less on what in Week Three we call the haves and have-a-lots, and more on what we call the have-a-little and have-not population.
Ping-ti Ho 1962/1967 certainly believed that because of such Chinese institutions as clan and community schools that some of the successful Chinese Civil Service Examination Candidates in Category A were from humble backgrounds and he devotes several pages to providing anecdotal evidence on this point.
We hope to provide soon systematic empirical objective evidence to refute or confirm Professor Ho’s intuitions from our on-going recompilation of a database of 75,000 Successful Imperial Examination Juren and Jinshi Chinese Civil Service examination candidates 1371-1904 and our current compilation of 120,000 Chinese University Graduates, 1902-1951.
According to Smith 1982, 34, reproduced in Slide 22 of Week One Part Four’s ppt presentation, the 2,631 students who attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure from 1868-1941 included no children of agricultural laborers and 18 children from parents who were unskilled laborers. We should be able to produce comparable counts at least for the first half of the twentieth century by 2014. We already have such data for the second half of the twentieth century, which we discuss in depth in our Week Two lectures and look forward to future discussion.
James and Byung-Ho
Esteemed HKUST staff,
I am writing to request that the discussion forum format be amended to allow the use of Screen Names by posters. I am asking this be done for three reasons:
1. Using one's real name here to make comments can easily lead to undesirable consequences that go counter to all reasonable concerns regarding internet privacy and security. Web crawlers eventually pick up these posts and search engines, such as Google, will index them, making them available as search results. As this information becomes public domain, it enables spammers and identity thieves to begin trying to work their evil magic. Using Screen Names helps defend against that.
2. Making controversial comments using one's real name can have undesirable consequences for those of us living in places such as Mainland China, where mention of certain historical events or criticism of certain political institutions is punished by the authorities. Screen Names would mitigate this risk. I would be really upset to have my visa cancelled and be deported for some casual comment I made on a Coursera discussion forum.
3. Having 30 or 40 registered users posting as 'Anonymous' is quite confusing and gives no continuity to their statements. Consider the confusing mess that results when 'Anonymous' asks a question and 'Anonymous' answers. Consider the confusing mess that results when one “Anonymous” holds a certain position and another “Anonymous” believes the opposite. This is already happening, and it makes for a forum that is disjointed, difficult to follow and much less useful as a learning tool than one in which Screen Names are allowed.
Even though the Screen Name feature is not currently enabled, I maintain that it should be. It is a feature that most forums offer, for the simple reasons listed above. It would not involve much additional technical effort and would be a boon to forum users.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I’m going to cross post this in the Technical Issues thread.
It is a technical implementation of the Coursera platform, and applies to all Coursera course. More precisely, there is no 'No screen name' feature implemented.
HKUST has no additional policy in this regard.
I think eventually we need to look at the Roman Catholic System in the West. In this system lower class talented youngsters were selected by the local priest and brought to the attention of the local bishop for further education. Even if they came from the lower classes they still reach enormous power. There were Cardinal Richeliew of France and Cardinal Wolsey of England. Another system that need to be considered would be the Ottoman System. They took young Christian boys (janissaries) from their territories and educated mostly for their army. However, the brightest young boys was given an excellent education (viziers) and entered the ruling class of the Ottoman Empire.
All of this is very informative and necessary if we in the US are going to savage our current system of public education as student who went through public schools in Virginia in the period 1940-1949 and can Ttest to the fine quality of that education and I was from a German immigrant family ( grandparents both came over from Germany) so I was not from either a wealthy or elite background. My grandfather was a German baker. But all four of my brothers graduated from college, three with Masters degrees and I even pursued the doctorate in econometrics from Purdue University. So upward mobility did exist then.
What is interesting in all systems is the early identification of both ability and passion in you g people which then opened up education and upward mobility. This still seems to be the answer. Wmw
I think you might find a recent article, July 30, 2013, in the New York Times newspaper interesting. It contains a list of the percent of low-and -moderate income students at the top 50 most selective private colleges in the US.
Paul,
I posted a thread on how to change to your time zone. Do it once and you will never have to do it again. Here it is in case you did not see it:
Go to drop down under your name. Select settings. You will see a location indicated for the time. Change it to a location in your time zone. (Probably will not see your exact location) Save it and all the deadlines will be indicated in your own time zone. No need to calculate.
So, I am in Baltimore Maryland. Baltimore does not appear as a city to select. New York does. Both are in eastern time zone. I selected New York. Now all of my deadlines are correct.
This was raised in another thread. The professor should explain. He also only really noted 1988 and not the other decade, as I remember. It leaves everything so unclear otherwise.
Anon Gleb,
Another thread conjectured about Tiananmen as does this above.. Of course the prof would not want to endanger his relations to PKU if this were the case; so ultimately the protest, and not wanting to talk about it, is likely the cause. It may not be that the data mystery is unverifiable; he said the data were taken and not returned; he likely knows where they went. In any case, if I were in his shoes, I might (likely would) do the same: not elaborate.
As for the missing decade???? That I would like to know more about. For one, why did he not even mention it?
In any case, interesting data nonetheless.
Would someone be so kind as to explain more fully what is meant by the term "tertiary education"? Much appreciated.
I would like to highlight major factors in the comparison between HK and US university students data.
First of all, most universities in HK are public universities. They run on mostly government funds and their purpose is to provide students with a decent education. Student fees are extremely affordable and there are many incentives for students from low income families. US elite colleges are private institutions that are essentially profit-driven, as they have to be able to afford the best researchers in the world and invest substantial amounts of money in research to stay at the top. Their main strategy is to attract the wealthiest students to get the most money from very high student fees and generous alumni donations.
Secondly, in HK the wealthiest families send their kids abroad to study in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Most of the local students at HK universities are there simply because they cannot afford college education and related expenses overseas.
Thanks. There are lists of books in another thread. I am playing catch-up with some of them. I am also taking or planning to take, other classes so it is hard to distribute my time but Chinese history is certainly interesting.
How was the science/tech/society class? I was taking several at the same time and could not take that.
Look at the history section of saylor.org. They have some good stuff there
There's a new one at edx on the history of Chinese architecture. Starts 18 October.
https://www.edx.org/course/tsinghua-university/800009011x/history-chinese-architecture/1081
Which of China's Heads of State/Party Leaders/Foreign Ministers since 1949 have achieved Jinshi status?
I am very happy to talk with you. We can share our feelings and knowledge.
I am not very sure about the proportion of elite high school students in China.
However I want to add another factor that affect what kind of high school Chinese middle school students can get in. That is the province you were born. Though it is not forbidden for them to attend better high school in other province, the fact is most of them go to high schools in their own province. There may be 3 reasons: 1.the college entrance examination papers are different in many province; 2. they can only take the college entrance examination in their own province (this is a hot topic in china now, and some province have announced to remove this restriction. However big cities like Beijing, Shanghai have not, and these are the most important places. ); 3.they are too young to live alone. The worst inequity of education is the uneven distribution of education resources and the large gap of education level among provinces, and between cities and countryside as well. And that leads to the result that it is harder for students from countryside (usually poor) to get into the best high school, universities, and jobs. The government has tried and is trying many ways to improve the education situation in the countryside, but it takes time.
The professor`s viewpoint was very popular in the past few years, however many other professors have point out the shortage of the method of argument.
For primary and middle school, students have to get in the nearest school from home (I wonder what is the fact in other countries. Because of this rule, the houses near good schools are extremely high.)
For high school, the determining factor is mainly academic score after middle school, and extra talent can help a little. However because of the reasons I said above, students usually go to high school of their province (the province your hukou is in).
For university, they can choose one in the whole country and world without any restriction. The criterions are: 1,the most important one, the score they get in the college entrance exam; 2, extra talent. Besides that, top universities are all trying to get the best high school students, so they take measures like give some seats to some elite high school with no need to take the college entrance exam, or let the High-School Principal nominate a few students, and the nominated ones can get 5 or 10 even 20 extra scores, though they need to take the college entrance exam.
I wonder what is it situation in your country?
> as getting into uni is a thing, graduate is a really different issues. Do you agree with me guys? :D
Yes
The big data professor Lee presented are interesting. I thank him for carrying out such study. His interpretation is one of the many. I hope this is his work in progress. There will be more drill-down research coming.
As for the difference between China and U.S., the biggest the difference is the "Chinese culture" which emphasizes on scholarly study. An ancient Chinese proverb, "all professions are secondary, only scholarly pursuit is supreme", is deeply ingrained in almost all Chinese. I was told from day one that good academic achievement is my only way out of poverty by my parents who were down-and-out refugees from China. I believed in it and benefitted from it. And, I said the same to my children who grew up in U.S. Large percentage of Americans do not put high priority on education. This kind of ingrained cultural difference contributed to the difference between Chinese mobility and American mobility, more so than college cost or family on come, etc. it would be interest to collect data to actually sorting out the underlying reason for the difference.
none of the above comments address the difference between USA and china. The differences are freedom, rule of law, Tolerance, resolve to admit mistakes(not protect face), honesty, shine a light on evil and fight it. China is opposite on the traits
Considering an undergraduate education in American Universities:
An average of C- grades from Yale is more influential, in some circles, than valedictorian credentials from Ball State. However, being a Longhorn from Texas will get you a job easier with other Longhorn run companies, being a Hoosier helps when doing business with Hoosiers and being Catholic helps when dealing with Notre Dame graduates. These names of elite or decidedly (by who?) non-elite universities are clubs more than scale representations of the quality of education. Clubs based on legacy, beliefs, values, shared experiences, on wealth...
What we are looking at, when we consider undergraduate degrees and the roles they play in social mobility in the USA, is more a result of in-group / out-group politics and networking than it is an indicator of academic/technical value of an 'elite' education.
To clarify, an autodidact Coursera scholar with no degree would not stand much of a chance in a competitive, resume based, interview against fraternity presidents from Harvard or even party animals from Yale. Coursera sets information and the organized learning process free but the accreditation is just as important, if not monumentally more important, to some of todays students as is the actual journey of learning.
Of course the quality of undergraduate education will differ from school to school, student to student, due to resources, faculty, setting, and student motivation; however, the most important thing to remember about the concept of "elite" is that it is not valuable because it represents a higher quality of education per se but that it is an image, a badge of status and affiliation.
Lei Yu,
What portion of a Chinese university's budget is provided by state aid? Does this vary? What are the differences between public/private universities, if any? In the US, for one, public schools are generally cheaper, though their costs have been rising and the portion of income provided by states falling. Private schools can be prohibitively expensive but that can be balanced out by financial aid--some needs-based, some merit-based--or some combination of these. Also, students commonly take out loans--many times in significant amounts. The choice of school one attends can often be influenced by finances, financial aid and location.--not just academics or prestige.
during the time Puyi lived in Forbidden City, there were 1100 eunuchs on payroll doing basically nothing, and they looted the ancient treasures. see movie 'The Last Emperor'...No movie is perfect. The point I raised is basically true, is it not? U.S. had a gay President -- James Buchanan. USA will have another, likely, in the next 30 years. Men volunteered to be castrated if they were promised a job in the Palace, and lifelong job security. Eunuchs were effective administrators because they did not sleep around or get tripped up by women(like Monica Lewinsky), especially with the Emperor's concubines(if the Emperor was straight).
I couldn't agree more. There's a lot of stats presented but very little analysis as to how and why.
Seth,
I think that this specific course would have been aided by say two--three weeks of preliminary history lectures/readings that present a qualitative picture of events and some background for students lacking a background in Chinese history and then launching into the quantitative data lectures. Or maybe to have had a preliminary historical overview class offered first.
However, even if the background were not supplied, I was struck that nothing was said in lecture 2 of week 2 at all about the missing data-- other than that it was missing. Another issue that was not addressed is why the particular variables about which data are supplied were chosen. Of course, the class or subsequent classes, may touch on others--such as ethnicity--so the information may well be further developed.
I am playing a game of catch-up by reading up on Chinese history while trying to keep up with this class. I am also trying to finish another class and start a new one. (And work!). It is a juggling act but I do not think my bit of discombobulation is entirely due to my schedule! (;-
Dick,
Suggesting general background reading and supplying some generic thematic lectures on China's history need not be overly controversial or politicized. This could be in addition to the quantitative material presented. Students would be free to draw their own conclusions or supplement the course-supplied background, as they see fit. It is just very hard with no background to put any if this in context and, unlike Seth, most of us are not PhD historians--albeit in another speciality.
Yes, contacts at Harvard, et al are very important. And, the New York Times, for one, has written about the closed prospects in certain law career paths for even grads of schools just below the Ivies. But, even if you attend a lower-tier US undergrad school, attending a good grad school can also make a difference.
I'm not so sure about upward mobility in China and education in any case. I suppose comparing Peking U to Ivies or other elite schools is OK in the sense of seeing the economic spread of students at each but is it a sufficient piece of evidence to show mobility? Perhaps in our professors' viewpoint it is a necessary piece. I would like to know that. That is why some supplemental theoretical lectures might help me, at least, to understand where they are coming from.
I agree to some extent but I also think, speaking for myself as an American, we are not lacking in ethnocentrism, either. Even if he has some sort of "agenda," or more subtle influences of values operate on his choice of research, they also operate on researchers in the West. No research is value-free.
It is interesting to see evidence of a somewhat different worldview and that does not entirely correspond to my own worldview and can inform me about a society about which I have very limited knowledge.
I'm more disappointed in the lack of background for the data and the possible methodological weaknesses in what he is presenting than in the realization that he conforms to certain values or feels constrained in what he says.
Gary I disagree. China is the world's second largest economy, and although the wealth is not as equally distributed, the wealth in China's first and second tier cities is comparable to the US.
This is very true. It might have been a very different course were Hong Kong still in the British Commonwealth. That being said, it still provides some interesting data an a look at a different way of "doing" history--though lacking context, this being not only the lack of explanation for missing data. Even with the constraints on what they may feel like they can say, more background would be good. For example, providing an explanation of terms.
Prof. James Lee received his doctorate in the US and is not young. He would have seen a lot of change.
Obama taught at University of Chicago for 14 years and the First Lady worked there 16 years. It is not Ivy. Chinese have "Emperor complex", Worship of only one winner. This is why on Chinese radio you hear Harvard 1000 times each day. But H admits many as legacy admit, and that is opposite of meritocracy .... you can be average and get into Harvard if your family member went to H
That's all very true. My point really was to say that the Ivy League schools are not the only "elites." Duke certainly is and plenty of "elites" go to UVa, say. So using only the Ivies as the point of comparison may be flawed.
In addition to what you said, not only do kids go to public schools because of cost, they also go to less prestigious private schools that offer them better aid.
I wonder, too, about the dynamic of tuition in China. How much does the government contribute to the schools? For example, what is the cost of the top provincial university discussed this week, especially with regard to family income and what percentage of it goes to pay the student's tuition? All very intriguing.
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I did think that the focus on U.S. ivy leagues schools did bias the evidence used to compare the US and China in terms of access to higher education. Certainly, there are many pathways to university in the United States and, if the older, private institutions lack diversity, there are options beyond those few universities for young people. I would have liked to see the comparison in terms of access to university-level education factor that in (especially as SuDa isn't one of China's top elite universities).
Believe it or not, many Chinese workers in the sweat shops work overtime voluntarily. Were not for the sweat shops, they have to go back to their remote home, to more miserable peasantry life. (Some rural areas developed recently, so some of them went back to smaller cities near their homes. Now it's hard for those factories offering bad conditions to hire people.) And now they earn three times more than those Vietnamese workers. Of course, Chinese government has to do more to protect them from being exploited.
I don’t see any real correlation between the data presented and the interpretations and conclusions.
The official word for Westerner was "savage" in all Chinese literature for a thousand years. It took China two wars losing to the British before the Chinese were forced by treaty to dispense with calling Westerners savage in all government documents. But I still see it in non government literature even in children's books where Chinese teach their kids to describe westerners as savages. Chinese believe they are the Master Race and detest westerners. Chinese professors in the course continue the usual line of Chinese thinking. Read Chinese Characteristics FREE on Google, by Arthur Henderson Smith. Chinese have technology now but the people are the same as ever
'The problem of denying education to the children of migrant workers, for example, has its roots in the Communists’ discriminatory system of household registry (hukou), which privileges officially recognized urban residents. This is a primary reason for China’s rapidly expanding social and economic disparities, which, in turn, contribute to the growing unrest in the country. Xu Zhiyong’s note to his friends reports that he made this point to his interrogators:
“Do you really believe that you can maintain social stability while you suppress calls for equal rights to education? What do you think the children of eight million migrants will do after they realize their futures have been ruined by discrimination?”I am a chinese studying in canada. i agree. The agreements in the lectures are weak. The course is just propaganda.
I would have to disagree that adequate care is taken of the bottom percentages in the US. The housing stock of low-income housing is often in poor repair and the pressure for the federal government to more and more get out of housing aid is putting tremendous pressure on housing for the have-nots and almost have-nots. Waiting lists for section 8 vouchers can be years long and many US households spend very large percentages of their incomes on housing--in urban areas a lot of it rental housing that is in extremely decrepit condition. In areas that do provide actual public housing (like NYC) the lists are long and there are vagaries of lotteries. Over 40% of the population in NYC lives below the poverty line (according to a NYTimes article). Large percentages of the US population are uninsured for health insurance--incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to pay premiums for insurance that only increase with age. One illness can bankrupt an individual or family-even insured-- the cost of health care being the highest percapita in the US of all world countries but the health indicators are not parallel. There are huge disparities between even neighboring counties in the US in life expectancy which are masked by overall increases in longevity. About one in seven Americans are "food insecure." The stagnation of wages and increasing reliance on lower level service jobs for income adds to this.
"Living in cardboard boxes" is a throw-away characterization that weakens the professor's presentation. But, we can severely overstate the effectiveness of the safety net in the US also.
That being said, the professor seems to somewhat mischaracterize the economic realities of China's lower classes. True, rural migrants to urban settings may own homes back in the country, but why do poor homeowners migrate? If things were so great at home, why leave? True, wages are higher in urban areas and one can better oneself presumably, however what happens if the economy tanks? Returning to rural property but going hungry or subsisting may not be that great a tradeoff. From my understanding, there is no national health system in China ( not in the US either) and even if the cost of care is cheaper who accesses this care? With social change, what is going to happen to the increasing percentage of Chinese residents who are aged? From what I have read in the US press, care for vulnerable populations in China--for example the mentally ill-- is very poor.
The measure of wealth being home-ownership is also not entirely apt. In US urban areas, especially, there has been a long history of long-term rentals of a primary residence--even among the middle class. Ownership of a second home may be problematic comparison too because it does not factor in the tax structure in the US.
So, I think we can overstate and even mischaracterize the safety net in the US and make it sound better than it is--or inflate its quality, at least for some, but I also think the professor overstates the security provided by home ownership in China and gives us no information or references on where to find information on the Chinese safety net.
He probably would do well to take out the reference to "living in a box" and make a more nuanced statement and comparison in the future.
I find, too, that the term "the West" when used to describe the contemporary world is usually used to refer to the UK and US. It would be interesting to see data from those Western countries that have tried to more assiduously transfer wealth from the have-a-lots to lower socio-economic strata of societies and to compare with the data from China. Still, I find the notion that home ownership provides a basic level of economic security intriguing. As many cities see escalating housing prices, one wonders whether this will further increase vulnerabilities to economic shocks.
He does not define wealth, which severely weakens his argument. I presume he is relying much too heavily on home ownership. He needs to be more even-handed in his comparisons. And more explanatory of what is in each variable. He may have a good case that disparities can be understated in the West, overstated in China. And the data he cites on land records is fascinating. But exaggerating weakens his case and making provocative statements about "living in a box" that are more like attention-getting quotes in a tabloid than academic analyses, make him appear as less good a historian than he probably is. I like the methodology to which I am exposed--quantitative and big-data history--never having studied them. But, I am less sure about all (or at least the degree) of the conclusions.
My post might sound a bit harsh, but so is the professor’s statement about the West and the have-nots’ cardboard boxes. Let us all remember that there are people taking this course who are unfamiliar with the welfare systems in the West, for example Scandinavia. Maybe even more provocative to me is the professor’s statement about the ability of the wage-less Chinese to go back to their houses. This statement downplays the suffering of poor Chinese farmers who have no other option to provide for their families than to leave them behind and serve as migrant workers in rich urban areas.
Firstly, people without work in my country, Denmark, can get help from the government and do not live in cardboard boxes. We redistribute income and wealth through a progressive tax system. We have free education at all levels, students even get a small salary to go to the university, entrance to the university is based on the students’ GPA from standardized high school exams and in some cases work experience, health care is free, there are unemployment benefits, etc. Furthermore, when I lived in Germany and the Netherlands, I did not see a lot of people living in cardboard boxes there either! As a matter of fact, I would rather be unemployed and live in a rented apartment in Copenhagen than I would be a poor Chinese migrant worker – but property owner.
Secondly, how does a Chinese migrant worker from rural Qinghai, unsuccessful in finding a job in Beijing raise enough money for a train ticket back to his house. And if he manages to get back, what is his house actually worth if he cannot make a living in the area where it is located? Summa summarum, property-based wealth is determined by what the property in question is actually worth and not as a “roof-over-your-head” (worthless without 'food-in your-mouth') Property located in areas where you cannot find a job or cannot grow enough food to sustain your family is practically worthless. Let’s look at an extreme case, why don’t poor Americans, who have no wealth (in the professor’s definition property ownership), simply go to Detroit and buy a house for $100 (for verification of price see www.realtor.com)? The answer is that they cannot find a job there and because of a high crime level. The house is indeed only worth $100. That is why the bottom 40% of Americans who have no wealth (again defined as property) are not knocking down the door of the listing company to buy this property.
And since the professor's comment is biased, I might as well go one step further and be completely unscientific as well? Yes, I did say 'as well'!
A little story from 1993 when I studied in Shenyang, Liaoning.
All we students from Liaoda had about a month off to celebrate Spring Festival. My sister had come from Denmark to visit me and we had met in Beijing, a truly beautiful and fantastic city. My sister and I got up early (around 6 am) to take in as much as possible of the scent of fried bread and noodles cooking on the street corners. Chinese seniors were doing shadow boxing and other exercises even in the frigid cold air. We were having a great time. However, as we passed by the World Trade Center where some migrant workers were getting up after sleeping huddled together over a manhole cover to take advantage of the warm steem we noticed that one of them, an old man, did not get up: he was dead, probably frozen to death. This image will never leave my mind. I guess this is why it really upsets me when the professor says that Chinese migrant workers can go back to their house... Yes, I know this is not a scientific argument. Of course it can happen anywhere. However, I am only human and his comment truthfully infuriated me.
Lucy,
I, for one, believe that we can overstate economic security in the West and find it hard to accept that some stereotypes we have of China may not be true. We all wear blinders to one degree or another. But, the statement that the professor makes is incredible, even if he may have not made it in all seriousness. He is certainly entitled to his point of view and to interpretation of data within the bounds of reason. However, this does go a bit, or much more than a bit, too far.
I think that you have hit on the reason why I am enjoying this class. It does challenge the simplistic view that the West has greater economic security than that in China. I find the data interesting, a corrective to the black-and-white stereotypes that often remain untested. But I agree that sometimes the lectures have veered into unsubstantiated territory and that, if the goal is to come out with a more balanced and thoughtful view, some of the language used in the lectures is incompatible with that objective.
The poor Germans. Maybe they are in need of some financial aid from the Greeks, Italians and Spanish, who all rank way above them in terms of 'wealth'.
Perhaps I am misinformed but I thought that many people left before the handoff to acquire citizenship in other parts of the British Commonwealth like Canada. Are there not a fair number of emigrants living in Vancouver, as an example?
Peter, Now many of the folks who moved on, say, to Canada have actually acquired Canadian citizenship (or citizenship in other Commonwealth countries if they went there), correct? Were these the more affluent people who could afford to leave? And others who might have wanted to leave but lacked resources were left?
What is the status of the citizens of Commonwealth countries who want to return to HK but keep their Commonwealth citizenship?
Thanks; really appreciate this information.
Thank you for the information. I had this impression but wanted to be sure I was correct. And, yes, it is the rich who have the most options, no matter what society one is talking about.
From, Anon-- questioner on HK emigrants
PS. We really need screen names on Coursera as is true on EdX. But, then again, I am not in charge! (;-
Peter,
What about people who might want to emigrate from HK now--well after the handoff?
The quick answer is people do consider themselves Chinese.
The long answer is Hong Kong has developed its own identity, because of its status of a British colony but also as a Chinese community insulated from the China proper and from all the political turmoil. The disconnect remain to this day and is shown in detail like the low adoption of Mandarin language.
The relationship remain fluid though in the face of the massive social change in China recently.
Happy to include photo in my postings. My only problem is working out how to do it so please pass on your wisdom. :-)
Anyway, hope you are enjoying the games in Moscow, Elena.
There are many reasons to post anonymously: safety, professional, political, privacy. Unfortunately, Coursera does not use screen names--as does EdX. So, there is no real choice but to post anonymously.
Not Anon above.
ZHONGSHE, China — A moribund coal mine here descends deeply, more than 3,800 feet underground. But the deal in which a Chinese state-owned conglomerate bought it may be even darker and more labyrinthine.
The Zhongshe mine and two others, in Shanxi Province in northern China, are at the center of unusually public accusations of mismanagement and corruption afflicting one of the nation’s flagship state conglomerates, China Resources. Critics say that the $1.6 billion purchase was vastly overpriced and illegal and that large sums may have been squandered or, as some are claiming, improperly diverted.
Leaked documents about the deal, and a court case in Hong Kong, have shed an unusually harsh light on the usually secretive workings of a major state-owned company. The disputed deal raises a stark question: Are China’s economy and resources held hostage by privileged state corporations and their executives, who can use influence and gain access to easy credit in ways that undermine long-term growth?
The dispute has become a chief exhibit in a debate in China about the wisdom of investing so much of the nation’s money in state-owned companies, especially when China’s economy has slowed. For the Communist Party leadership, the case distills concerns about the grip that state-owned conglomerates exert.
The problems for China Resources began in 2010, when its affiliates as well as a partner state company agreed to pay 9.9 billion renminbi ($1.6 billion) for the three coal mines and related assets, according to documents submitted to a Hong Kong court. The seller was a businessman, Zhang Xinming, a man with a reputation as a swashbuckling gambler, who also gained a 20 percent stake in the new joint venture.
The deal appeared to give China Resources a foothold in the coal industry here in Shanxi, the hub of China’s coal industry for more than a century and close to the energy-hungry cities and factories on the coast. But the company’s monthly business operations statements show that since the mines changed hands in 2010, the mines have not produced any coal.
“Legally speaking, this was a totally abnormal transaction,” said Chen Ruojian, a lawyer with the Duan & Duan law firm in Beijing. Mr. Chen is helping to represent the minority shareholders in Hong Kong, where the subsidiary behind the deal, China Resources Power Holdings, is listed on the stock exchange.
“It’s impossible to understand why they’d do this — pay so much for mines with expired exploration licenses,” he said. “State-owned companies have all sorts of problems, but we think it’s rare to have something as stark as China Resources.”
Political unease over the case grew after two Chinese journalists made accusations of corruption about the deal, and one singled out Song Lin, the chairman of the parent conglomerate, China Resources.
The Web site of People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper, has reported that the party’s discipline unit has received an accusation of corruption against Mr. Song and other senior executives at China Resources and is processing the complaint. Mr. Song has not been detained or charged with any wrongdoing, judging from the reports on the company’s Web site of his various public appearances. China Resources has denied wrongdoing and has hinted it might take legal action against Chinese journalists who have raised corruption accusations.
China Resources “is a major global player,” said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource companies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. If the claims about the coal mines are proved true, he added, “it would show that these companies can be ripped off or tricked. It doesn’t bode well for the globalization or professionalization of these companies.”
China Resources traces its roots to the days of Mao Zedong’s revolution, when it was established in 1938 in Hong Kong to raise money and buy military supplies to support Communist forces.
By 2012 it was China’s 18th-largest state-owned industrial company by sales, with revenue of $52 billion. Its wide-ranging products include medicine and beer, coal and real estate. Its chairman, Mr. Song, holds the same government rank as a vice minister.
The controversy over the coal deal has made China Resources a lightning rod for criticism of all state-owned enterprises, which produce about two-fifths of the nation’s economic output.
“Chinese shareholders have been treated like little lambs being slaughtered,” said Li Jianjun, a Chinese journalist who has taken up the accusations against Chinese Resources. “Companies like this need to be taught a lesson.”
“Marx forgot the problem that whoever manages a company tries to become its owner,” he added.
“State-owned enterprises try to spend as much as they can, so they have an excuse to demand more support and take more kickbacks.”
In the late 1990s, Zhu Rongji, then the prime minister, pushed hundreds of thousands of state-owned enterprises into the private sector, but the 120 or so largest of these businesses had the political muscle to resist privatization.
Instead they won official backing as pillars supporting the state’s role in the economy. They gained wealth and influence over the last decade, partly from their almost unlimited access to low-interest loans from state-owned banks.
But since taking office in March, Prime Minister Li Keqiang has dropped hints that he wants to rein in the privileges of state-owned enterprises, so that private companies win a bigger share of bank loans, investment projects and market opportunities.
“State-owned enterprises and private business should be regarded equally,” Mr. Li said at a meeting with economists and executives in April.
Party insiders and economists have said, however, that the issue of state-owned enterprises is so contentious that a party leadership meeting in the fall is likely to put off any big decisions.
The biggest state-owned enterprises possess enormous political sway, employ hundreds of thousands of people and extend a global reach. Many, like the State Grid, the monopoly electricity transmission company in most of China, or China Telecom, the giant mobile phone carrier, are widely criticized within China both for their inefficiency and for the fat profits they earn from charging high prices. Those profits allow them to hire and promote the offspring of senior government officials, who in turn ensure their longevity.
Chinese journalists have made many accusations. Wang Wenzhi of Economic Information Daily published a long report in mid-July on his blog stating that China Resources had paid almost twice what the mines were appraised for just three months earlier by another state-owned coal company, Datong Coal Mine Group, that had sought to buy them.
Mr. Wang had few specifics regarding Mr. Song, but the Chinese media and Internet discussion groups have been full of speculation over where the sums paid for the mines ended up.
Another journalist, Li Jianjun, used the Internet to distribute excerpts from what he said was a government auditor’s report last year that said the deal appeared plagued by missteps, overpayment, uncertainties and risks. “It remains unclear whether individual economic problems are involved,” the report said.
Others in the industry still see value in the mines. Shi Chunping, an independent coal trader specializing in coal from Shanxi Province, said in an interview that at least two of the three mines had valuable reserves.
He said that he had been down into the Zhongshe mine to inspect the coal, and that the reserves there were plentiful and of high quality.
The problem is that the reserves are quite deep. “The main issue is that the investment needed to develop the mine is huge,” he said. He declined to comment on the price paid by China Resources because he said he did not know the details of the transaction.
The economics of the deal have not been helped by a steep decline in coal prices since China Resources bought the mines three years ago. The output of strip mines in Inner Mongolia now exceeds Shanxi’s mine, while demand has grown more slowly than expected. As a result, coal prices have tumbled to 400 renminbi a ton (about $68) from 750 renminbi in 2010.
The region is economically troubled and residents in Zhongshe are eager for China Resources to start the mine here after years of inaction.
“It’s pitiful — there’s no mining, so we have no jobs,” said a 48-year-old farmer who gave only his surname, Kang, as he hoed a hillside cornfield across a gully from the back of the mine. “If we had jobs, we’d have some money and wouldn’t be doing this.”
The Hong Kong lawsuit asserts that the seller, a privately held company called Shanxi Jinye Coking Group, had held only mineral exploration rights for the mines it sold, as opposed to mineral production rights. And before the venture involving China Resources acquired the mines three years ago, according to the lawsuit, even those exploration rights had expired. Thus, the lawyers for the shareholders say, China Resources paid heftily for assets that the seller did not have the right to sell.
The company has not publicly responded in detail to the claims. In a statement on July 18, China Resources Power said that the transaction was aboveboard and that it was in the process of obtaining mining rights for two of the three mines; it obtained mining rights for the third this spring and is now starting mining there.
A few days after the initial statement, the parent company, China Resources, said on its site that the accusations were part of “a carefully planned, organized and concerted campaign of vilification orchestrated behind the scenes and using big rewards to buy off Internet enablers.”
On Wednesday, the chairman of China Resources, Mr. Song, issued a statement on the company’s Web site, denouncing the accusations of improper dealing as “utterly false charges.” Mr. Song called the mines purchase a “normal business activity,” and said he could take legal action against his accusers.
The big question now lies in how widely an official inquiry will extend and what it will disclose. The national audit office has said that it is reinvestigating the deal, and the Communist Party commission for investigating corruption has also said that any misdeeds will be punished.
Keith Bradsher reported from Zhongshe, China, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.
I do not think that the videos actually relate to happiness--its presence or absence. Without getting into an extended psychological discussion here, I would say that once one's basic needs are met, then the potential for seeking happiness begins.
I think one's values have quite a bit to do with where one looks for happiness. For me it comes from education, family, service to others. For others it might come from profession--which at one point was true for me but not so much now. For others it could be a god or some other religious or philosophical tradition.
As far as debt, money, mental or physical illness, employment insecurity, problems with one's children, parents, siblings--any number of other things: I look at these as stressors that certainly can impede my ability to be happy or make me significantly unhappy, depressed or hopeless. They can even kill literally or figuratively; depression is no figment of imagination, for example. If my child were to die, a part of me would die, too. A young relative committed suicide at age 20. How hopeless he must have been. How do his parents feel now? I can't imagine.
But, tragedy and even serious disability or illness do not necessarily preclude happiness or fulfillment. I have worked in nursing homes. No resident set out to spend time in a nursing home long term--to know that he ir she likely might die there, even. Many were very unhappy but there were also many that had carved out meaningful lives despite what some of us might see as insurmountable misery.
And that is ultimately where I would come down--if I am at a point where I hopefully am capable of finding some meaning in my life, then I have a chance of finding some happiness in it.
I would also like to thank everyone involved in the preparation and presentation of this course. I enjoyed learning something about Chinese history and am impressed by the amazing amount of data available for analysis. I look forward to Part 2.
Why is the wealth in America so unevenly distributed among the have nots.
You can calculate it yourself. When your certificate is ready, your official grade will be shown in the course records but not on the certificate.
Yes, this is the way I did it. At first I weighted each point equally but then realized that each quiz question was weighted more heavily than each exam question. Luckily, I had quite a few points from the quizzes so I did pass with "room to spare" but I found the questions a bit confusing even though I am generally good with detail in my profession.
But, I will be back for part two. I think the teachers will probably try to make the questions a bit clearer--I hope so, anyway. (;-
congratulation, even if you got one more question incorrect in the final examination, you still earn a 60% regardless...i didnt realize so many students have a hard time with exams here, i got a 92%
Especially given the quantitative bent of this course, would it not be interesting to see statistics regarding course enrollment, completion, and average scores?
I believe the comparisons per se were informative. But, the discussion should have been much more nuanced (as is the reality) and the variables used for comparison (characteristics of schools, worker classifications, wealth measures, etc.) should have been better explained.
We (in the West) do ourselves a great disservice if we are not open to comparisons between and among various countries and cultures. They certainly are of interest academically. Professors such as ours are doing work in this area and it is much better to be knowledgeable of the variables and comparisons they are using than not. Whether we agree or disagree about the details and conclusions that they have elucidated, in fact those conclusions may become/are accepted by some, and I dare say could become more widely accepted or acknowledged outside of academics. It is better to be a part of this discussion than not.
Being from the US, I certainly did not like the comment about non-home- owners "living in boxes." At the same time I do acknowledge the huge and growing wealth disparities in our country and the real difficulties for people with lower incomes and resources, including portions of our rapidly aging population, in securing suitable housing.
I do look forward to the second part of the course and am curious to see if some student concerns will be evidenced in the discussions in that class.
I hope you have seen the announcement from our professors that all students' grades will be raised by 15 points so that should bring many more students over the threshold to passing!
That should help the originator of this thread who had 59 points total!
Weekly Focus | Course Work | Lecture Topics | Optional Reading |
Week 1: Social Structure and Education in Late Imperial China (Start on 22 July 2013) | There will be:
| 1.1: Introduction to Part One | HO, Ping-ti. 1962/1967. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China; Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911. Columbia University Press, 1-52, 92-125. Note: Due to copyright issue, we are not allowed to distribute this reading material to students for free. |
Week 2: Education and Social Mobility in Contemporary China (Start on 29 July 2013) | There will be:
| 2.1: Comparing Inequality in Education and Income Between China and the West | The instructors have written a book in Chinese tentatively entitled 'Silent Revolution: Social Origins of Peking and Suzhou University Students, 1949-2002' to be published by Beijing Sanlian this September. Those of you who read Chinese can consult themanuscript here. We realize that most Coursera students do not read Chinese and apologize that we will not have an English version until next year. We suggest you to consult the lecture notes for week 2 lectures when they are available on 29 Jul 2013. |
Week 3: Social Mobility and Wealth Distribution in Late Imperial and Contemporary China (Start on 5 August 2013) | There will be:
| 3.1: Wealth Distribution in the UK and US, 1700-2000 | CHEN, Shuang. 2009. Where Urban Migrants Met Rural Settlers: State Categories, Social Boundaries, and Wealth Stratification in Northeast China, 1815-1913. UM History PhD Dissertation, 32-59, 262-306. |
Week 4: Wealth Distribution and Regime Change in Twentieth Century China(Start on 12 August 2013) | There will be:
| 4.1: Wealth Distribution and Regime Change | No required reading |
Week 5: Final Exam(Start on 19 August 2013) | There will be:
| -- | -- |
Set your clock to the correct local time. Go to settings under your name at upper right. Select a city in your time zone ( I selected New York because I am also in EDT) Save the change and voila, the deadlines will be stated in your time zone. No more trying to translate! This works for all zones, of course, but you will have to select a city in your zone that will probably not be your location. I am in Maryland USA but nothing from Maryland is on the selection list.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/ladders
) but the numbers don't correspond to jinshi so I guess they meant shengyuan. It would be nice though if someone from the staff replied before the quiz deadline.In my case, the first time I answered all questions correctly, but doubted myself. so, I changed one answer. It was incorrect.
Be careful! In the quiz is quoted “our effective score will be based on your latest attempt”.And moreover the assignment submission policy is explicit: “We do not limit the number of attempts for all the quizzes and the final exam before the corresponding submission deadlines, however only the last attempt will be graded.”
Why are we offered 100 attempts to take this quiz when there is no feedback? I will answer the questions with my best judgment, but without knowing whether I am right or wrong, I have learned nothing. I have merely submitted myself to a judgment. This means nothing to me in a free MOOC. I am here to learn, not to succeed in a competition.
If you want the deadline to appear in your time zone rather than having to calculate from the Hong Kong time zone, here is what to do: go to settings at the drop down menu under your name. You will see a selected time zone. If it is not yours, go to the list of locations that drop down there. Select a location in your time zone. Save it and exit. The deadline will now appear in terms of your time zone.
You may not find your exact location; that us why I said to select one in your zone. For example, I am in Baltimore, Maryland, USA-- Eastern Daylight Time. Baltimore does not appear as a choice but New York City does. New York is also in the Eastern time zone so I selected it. Now all of the deadlines in any Coursera class I take appear in my local time.
https://class.coursera.org/newchinahistory1-001/forum/thread?thread_id=45
A classmate posted link on the thread above
I'm just going to guesstimate! Seriously, thanks for your help!
I did the same. Based in the GINI index for HK and the distribution of access to American universities one would expect a low number, even though this is not reflected in the actual percentages given in the lecture.
Same! In English, using "given. . . ., you would expect . . ." means that the expectation should be based on the "given" fact, not on other facts not mentioned. We can only answer questions that are asked, not try and imagine what the writer might have intended to say but didn't. Disappointing.
obviously the answer is 10% , because the question is not !!!! on the real data the prof presented !
but you have to answer what you would expect, given that 18,20,25 % of US elite universities are from the bottom half, taking into account that 10% got a pell grant and wouldn´t otherwise be able to study there, you would expect!! with a similiar Gini- coefficient, that its 20% - 10% = 10% !!!!!!!!!!
Hey - honour system! We're not supposed to be giving the answers. Also, I'm not sure that's right. I can make as good a case for at least one of the other options. But my basic point here is that it would be preferable if you could observe the protocol everyone else has, when discussing this question.
I share the above frustrations. It's a very bad question in many ways. I won't repeat these as previous posters have noted most of my concerns already. I hope they will reflect on this and think them through better for the next assignment.
I agree with most of the comments in this thread. Presumably we are supposed to reply in terms of our expectations, based only on the information provided in the introductory sentences and not on the conclusions provided in the lecture. That is how I understand the structure of the question "Given... what proportion... would you expect". However, as others have pointed out, the range of Gini coefficients in HK, China and the US and the percentage of low-income Pell grant recipients (thanks Wikipedia for filling in info not provided in the course!) at a select few US universities simply doesn't provide enough information for me to make anything more than a random guess at the percentage of students entering university in HK from the bottom 50% of households by income. One thing that seems clear to me is that you absolutely cannot consider half the population of Hong Kong to be low income, so the info about low-income Pell grant recipients does not seem particularly useful. It's a poorly-worded question, and I'm disappointed that no one from the course has commented to clarify it.
Interesting. I too went for a second attempt, but having started where you went on your second attempt - with the answer the prof had gven - I changed to another answer. It will be very interesting to see the correct answer on Sunday, but I'm also frustrated at the lack of input from the professors.
I agree with your analysis. What amazes me is (1) the course staff apparently want us to practice bad statistics (comparing tomatoes to potatoes, to borrow from an earlier poster), and (2) the staff apparently consider this claim ("what one would assume if one were to ignore the data presented in this course") to be information that is worth retaining.
Given that there are only three precious quiz questions each week, I'm surprised that one if them is spent "proving" a point that the lecturer claimed was false.
Oh, well. I guess we shouldn't expect any better from the rest of this course. I'm disappointed. :-(
Incidentally, by US standards (I'm not sure about UK or HK), the Q3 answer choices are grammatically incorrect. When using a noun as a modifier, use the singular form: "freshman class" not "freshmen class". This doesn't affect the substance of the question or the misgivings detailed above, I'm just calling attention to it in case the staff might want to change the wording.
So now we have the answer from the marking of the assignment. It's 50%. Not the answer I gave, because I read it as expecting us to assess what we "would expect", rather than what the prof told us in the lecture. (50% was the answer I originally chose, but after thinking about the question some more I went for 10%). Clearly all of us in this discussion thread agreed that this was a poor and poorly worded question, but on the bright side, it gives us a clear insight into how future questions should be viewed: forget any analysis or subtleties - the answer will be spelled out in the lectures. Too bad that nobody from the course could be bothered to clarify this.
I must say, I had expected that the course - my first MOOC - would actually be at a university level, but maybe my expectations are too high. I feel I'm being expected to accept over-interpreted conclusions drawn from interesting administrative data.
Susan,
I have taken lots of Coursera classes. Do not take this as necessarily typical. Try others. I only had one that I thought was very bad and this--I just do not know what to make of it. The data are certainly interesting, even if I think some of the specific comparisons are not entirely apt.
But, even if quantitative history is approached this way, or this is one of the ways in which it is approached, some background is in order. Perhaps it would have been good to have a few generic intro lectures, or at least a recommendation of a book or list of books from which we could select, to get some background on China before the class started. Put this on the course description page. After all, this class's description says no special background is needed.
Then, certainly, when the class opens, the professors should start with an intro lecture on what quantitative history is, why they use it, how they define the terms they use in their studies, and why they have chosen certain variables and data sets to do their analyses.
I agree, so far this particular "course" is not much of a course at all. I have taken many other Coursera courses and all were quite similar to university courses, with rigorous scholarship. This one is not up to par, in my opinion. I'll continue to listen to the remaining lectures to see what else the prof has to say, but don't think I'll bother with the quizzes anymore.
I have to agree. I too am reconsidering the course. I think I might just listen to the lectures and skip the quizzes and exam, to spare myself future frustration and since I am totally indifferent to whether I get whatever it is they send you if you pass the course. But I would like to get some feedback/reaction from the staff to the concerns expressed in this discussion thread, particularly their failure to respond to us (which seems rather uncivil, today the least). But I don't expect it.
That should be 'to say the least'. Curse you, Spellchecker!
I assume we do have a TA in this class? Even if the profs are not active, the TAs generally are. Ah well, as Lizzie says, it does vary but this is definitely on the low side for participation!
So, where does it even say in the explanation that the answer is 50% and WHY? Telling me where to listen on the video is fine but how does what is said relate to the actual wording and variables in the question?
I took the data given in the question, applied it as an approximate ratio for HK compared to the ratio in the US given what the question said about the Gini numbers and the introduction of the idea of Pell grants into the question. If the Pell number was not relevant (or was it?), why put it there?
What am I missing here?
PS. In other classes, the profs did explain the answers after the quiz closed or, in the case of one, even opened a special email account for us to ask questions so that we would not violate the honor code by putting answers in the forum(our quizzes were all due at the end of the term)
Sorry to say, but I am disappointed by the (50%) answer, to me this does not seem right. To be honest, for me this is demotivating.
I thought I had figured out what they were asking for too. But I fail to understand how the question as worded is correctly answered by a regurgitation of the 50% statistic from the lecture. However, I have decided that I won't waste any more energy on quiz 3, since it seems pretty evident that the staff are ignoring this thread. Do we get to provide feedback after the course?
Agree, but in addition how can you consider the bottom half of the population by income in HK all to be low income. Doesn't make sense: bottom two quintiles plus half the third quintile! Maybe in some very impoverished countries, but hardly HK.
Go to week 2 quiz, click on see previous attempts, click on review, you will see their " reasoning" .
No worries! Enjoy!?!
Yeah, and just for fun, the answer choices should be True, False, and 50%.
A recent response to a general inquiry from a friend in Kunming, (unedited)
"Well, Chinese universities! Good question, personally I never be in any Chinese university for studying, I was studying in a college in Oz for a while. But I do know something about universities in China, there are so many friends of mine still in there. From my view, I think during the whole Chinese education, middle school and high school even before are lot more useful than Chinese universities. The universities in China or different from US. It's hard to get in, but easy to graduate! Almost like if you past the exam for entering the university, you can be 95% sure you get your certification! I see most of my friends in university in China are just playing games, shopping and before the exam studying hard for few night, that's it. After you graduate from there, you give everything back to the teacher. Sad but true. Unless you are in the top 10 universities, that might be a different story.
Indeed the Chinese education are sucks, there demands some change which even the society doesn't know how to change it. Now the education system is just all about the marks of the examination, they don't care if you really understand or not, you don't care your abilities of making thing out at all, all they care about is the marks. I use to be in the number one high school in my city, but 90% of my school mates are nerd, and if I talk with them in english thy cant speak, but good at their exam, and the teachers give the kids so many homework... We were going to school at 7am and back home at 11pm when I was at high school, and my teachers hate he system too, but what to do.. And before after every monthly exam, my teacher used to get extra paid because of some other good mark kids from the school. It's a funny sick system, but I think I can see it start I change little by little now, long way to go though. Not my problem anymore, haha;) and its true that no matter which family you come from, you end up to be classmate, especially at university. But in china there are 3 levels of university, the "worst" the school is ( which means the lower marks' student school) charge more fee than the others. When I found out that from my friends I thought its a bit strange."
Every resource is a source with its own biases and angles.
Sad, based on the response to my earlier observation, but my earlier statement is an inconvenient truth.
How is education a random process? It is people evaluating the questions and then giving the better answer.
All questions have something to do with numbers and this is a little frustrating sometimes.
I, too, found the language used in one of the quiz questions confusing. And I agree that that was a little disappointing as I re-listened to the lectures but still wasn't sure that I fully understood the question.
Don't we get any explanation of what the right answer is? And why?
Perhaps I am missing something, but can someone send me in the direction of the identification of the right answer and the explanation? I am very confused about the answers and may stop doing the quizzes if I do not get some idea where I went wrong. If I do not have that, then the quizzes may be meaningless.
Thanks.
Change the deadline to your time zone and you will not be confused:
Go to drop down menu under your name. Select settings. Go to time. Select a location in your time zone (your exact location may not be there so be sure to select your time zone). Set it to this location. Deadline will change to your time zone--no more confusion!!!!
Is this a result of the exam based education criteria in China?
Would you take the course if you missed the first exam completely and had no option to make up the points?
If there were an essay component to this course I would consider the topic: "Self-Cultivation or Social Advancement? The perceived value of education to Chinese students / American students / Swedish Students" or alternatively "The perceived value of education to students from low income families, from middle income families, and from upper income families."
~knowledge is it's own reward~
Don't tell me I'm in for another quiz defined by its tricky words. I am still recovering from quest. 3 on quiz 2!!!!!! (;-
http://www.businessinsider.com/li-china-household-finance-survey-2012-11?op=1
(Anonymous Gleb)I agree. They were looking for the answer to another question than the one they asked.
Dear Classmates,
James and I admit that the Question Three of Week Two was written in an ambiguous way.
We assign the full mark to all choices of this question. In other words, we treat all choices as correct as long as you made a choice.Thank you so much. I am sure I am not alone in appreciating this and having the marking corrected.
Dear Grace, The same happened to me, but maybe because in China 10% and not 1% of households have a 34% of wealth. It would be nice if this was explained to us. CZ
What is required is a real explanation after the quiz answer is given, instead of just telling us where the answer is on the video. That is the way it is done in other classes. At least you find out the teacher's line of reasoning and maybe understand it, or at least know what to bring to the next quiz in terms of how the prof thinks. All we have here is mystery. If the quizzes are already programmed in this class, perhaps Prof. Lee could explain answers in weekly announcements.
I cringe to think what the final will be like. I guess I would be willing to at least try the second course on the hope that the prof. might be more explanatory in giving us the frame of reference and method of his analyses of the data and selection of comparisons.
I think what frustrates me most in this class, though, is that the professors are not at all on the forums addressing issues like why certain schools are compared, what goes into the concept of wealth. Or, give us some summary comments in the next week's announcement. They should look to the Penn course on aging that just closed, the UVa philosophy course, even the Univ. of MN social epidemiology class not to mention some Hopkins classes. There are many varied but effective approaches. They are just too silent here.
The problem in this class is that, while we do get the reference on where on the video to find an answer, we get no actual explanation or line of reasoning. I wish te professors would have done so. In fact, they do have a chance to do so still.
Another reading recommendation: Chu Chan Yen. Quiet Mountain village. Trilogy aPeasant's view of the cultural revolution.
I'll probably go through them several times before I get the correct answer.
Question 1 ask for the best answerS (plural), but the system will not allow multiple percentages. Question 2 asks for an answer of a specific percentage, but my understanding of the lecture and graphs say that the answer is somewhere between two of the percentages. For the most part there was very little clarification in the lectures and the quiz questions were poorly worded. I am not going on to part 2.
Question 1 asks for the best answers( more than one). Can only give one answer based on the system. Yet the lecture and the data indicates a range of percentages, depending on which study you look at.
Has anyone also thought. Q2 is a bit confusing? Is the word "respectively" missing or would it make the question and answers clearer?
I am very mixed up this week: though I like the course overall in terms of research, I am doubtful on some--not all, by any means--analyses and explanations, and for sure on the wording of questions.
I hate to guess but just may do so(;-
Sorry, meant q1
If it's like the other Coursera courses I've done, this one will be offered again in 4-8 months using the same or similar materials, including the quizzes. They are probably editing the quizzes in preparation for a future session of the course.
I share your belief.
Christian, Anonymous: I believe both of your interpretations fit the wording of the question, and therein lies the source of the confusion.
YES(;- Thanks.
Can anyone who got this question correct please explain it, as I am so lost on this one!! Thanks
I was able to get full credit for the quizzes but, truth be told, I "guessed" three of the twelve questions over the 4 weeks ultimately--ie got the information from the videos and thought about them, eg the 40/50% business and then just "punted." In fact, I did this last test three times and would have only gotten a score of one, had I gone with my first try. And I did not know more when I completed my third try!
I suppose I need to try the test so that all of my work is recorded and to ensure I do get the certificate. But, I can't say I know more than someone who got a lesser score.
I assume that the professors are trying to make the quizzes " straightforward" but the wording of the questions sometimes undercuts this. Also, we got questions only on data in week four when we, in fact, heard about theories. Strange we did not get a question about or using theory.
In any case, still an interesting class. It has "growing pains" for sure, though. Hopefully these will be addressed next time around and in part two going forward. Looking forward to seeing what happens in part two and to see lots of my fellow students there.
@Xiao, I followed your same line of reasoning but ended up with an error :-( Good luck for the final CZ
Questions 2 & 3 say: "Select the BEST answer." but, question 1 says "Select the BEST answers." So, it's plural and there is more than one answer which leads to the only "correct" answer. Using this logic the content is irrelevant. Are we having fun yet?
Anon, as time moves on histories are often " rewritten" not just by quantitative data analysis as here, but also qualitative data--discovering other documents, using previously known but unused or un-or under- emphasized materials. Or materials not used in the past because they did not fit into prevailing ideologies, value systems or stereotypes.
The big difference here is that now we have the means to make analysis of large datasets much easier. However, there are always going to be judgement and values involved. What data do I choose? What variables do I select in the data I have? (eg in the data on university registrations we saw earlier in the course, only certain questions and answers were chosen to examine) Do I look for the most accessible data or try for less accessibility but maybe poorer quality datasets? And if I am comparing the dataset to another how do I determine what to compare it to?
Then once I have the data compiled, how do I analyze it and interpret it?
I do absolutely agree, though, that the availability of a means to analyze very large datasets has the potential (in some cases) to be a "game changer." And this class certainly opened my eyes to a new way to "do" history.
9 out of 12. I didn't make the same effort on the final exam. Lost interest.
As I said, just lost interest in the course. My performance in other Coursera courses were 100, 98.4, and 93.8. It has to do with caring.
I put unequal and continued up to 1946. Still not sure why this is wrong since the land reform took place in 1946 after which it would have become more equal.
I too struggled with this one, wanting to put cadre but remembering that professor said factory. I checked the graph, and still felt that cadre increased more than factory workers. Then I re-read the question. It asks for the one that is increased most proportionally, so I did the math. I don't remember the numbers, but factory workers did increase the most proportionally.
I wished I have checked on this forum. Didn't like the video and just do the reading and chart (my memory is not good from just listening), but now realised the chart is different from the video footage. :(
This was a tricky question but as the only figure provided for struggle was Other, I used that and then rounded up the answer. Hope this helps as it gives the correct answer.
@Mark No middle or poor peasants died or fled. The figures which you excluded from the total were the total of all class categories who died or fled ref: 4.4 slide 3
I did not know what 'other' stood for, so decided to just quote the slide which stated 30%. Not a good move.
I'm in Newcastle. Maybe we could do Skype meets, at least we are in similar time zones.
I have tried to add the qq contact, but no matching was found. Can u rewrite that?
qq group:167384390
Hey guys, I am the student who is not in Shanghai, instead I'm now in Chongqing.it's a pity that there is no study group just for students in Chongqing. I sincerely want to join you,share the points of views with you guys ,okay?
I am from Fujian province but working in Beijing. There are many Jinshi from Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Fujian.
Hi mates I'm travelling in China for the moment and I'll be in BJ from the 20th till the 24th. I'd really like to meet people who take the course while I'm around. Would anybody be interested in a meet up say in Wudakou?
Hi! I'm from Italy and have been living in China for 12 years now.
This study group is for people interested in share ideas and help to clear doubts about the course in spanish. Even if somebody want to learn and read Spanish language or share your ideas in english YOU'RE WELCOME!
Si o podría cambiar el nombre a spanish group
Soy ...Chinese... Y hablo muy poquito Español! No es bien, tristemente. Creo tu idea es buena.
Wonderful it's okey if you want participated in this group :) we want to know more about of China and you can learn a little bite of Spanish what do you think?
Gracias por participar si tiene algo para compartir porfavos hazlo :)
Gracias tengo unos documentales muy utiles mi mail es anabaez.95@hotmail.com alrato pongo el link
Susana es parte de una escuela donde enseñan chino a ver si ella nos puede ayudar :), gracias por interés
No te preocupes Susana pero ¿qué texto revisaste? Me siento perdida
Se me olvidó agregar mi e-mail a mi previo mensaje, biancamesqueue@yahoo.com
Gracias :)
Hola a todos :) quería pedirles su opinión ¿que les parece si aparte de este grupo abrimos uno en facebook?
Como a las 7 les envió los libros a los nuevos mails
HOLA a todos! ¿Qué les parecieron los vídeos? Sin falta a todos mañana les envió los PDF por email y otros links interesantes para el curso :)
“fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.
Eso de las estadísticas a mi me confunde de vez en cuando /:
Excelente Lizbeth, en efecto, muy interesante...e ilustrativo diría yo
Sou Brasileiro mas moro nos EUA desde 2000.
Anyone from Delmarva?
Of course, Amstersam/Almere is present and waiting for action :)
Think we are a minority here though; haven’t spotted that much Dutch on coursera courses, isn’t that known yet. Nonetheless, good to see some Dutch people in here and of course good luck to you as well!
I am thinking about a Washington, DC study group? Later, after the course, we can get together to discuss what we plan to use the information gained for. I plan to advocate on a better understanding using non-Western paradigms. What does the class think?
You should always try interlibrary loan, Jared. I think your town would participate. You are in the US?
I found the book via the interlibrary system. I had no idea the website for our class had opened early so I just located the book today. (Sunday) I am amazed. I thought I would have to request it from a university library but the public library in Baltimore has it. It takes a while to arrive in my location and library system outside of Baltimore but better late than never. Since it is optional, I assume I can pass the test without it. But, I definitely want to read it!
Thanks, Judy. My local library couldn't get it for me.
It. Is the same book.
Liu Ya, my son is living in Shanghai and he does buy through Amazon UK and has had books arrive safely. You might want to check it out.
Corrine, on the Kindle, what my son does is download to his computer and then downloads from there to the Kindle. According to him it works. As I mentioned above, he is in Shanghai.
Hi there, I work in beijing and have a kindle and an amazon uk account. It works just fine, exactly the same as anywhere else. Happy shopping! Kari
Thanks Maria
Great! Thank you for your sharing, Maria:)
Thank u maria the summary is ok.
Here is another review of the book:
The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 by Ping-ti Ho, Review by: D. C. Twitchett, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African studies, University of London, Vol 28, No. 3, 1965, pp 657-659
http://www.jstor.org/stable/612125?seq=1
GREAT! Thank you! :-)
Please go to the forum "Silent Revolution 无声的革命", you may find some notes / summaries of the second text in English.
Thank you so much Yuling.
Title:The ladder of success in Imperial China;: Aspects
Author:Ho, Ping-ti
Book Price:US$ 3.79
Book Description:Acceptable condition. Former Library book
Received. Thank you very much.
Thank you Yuling. I managed to get the file finally.
Thanks for the advice. I am juggling other classes and obligations an the reading did look daunting!
I want to recommend the documentary 'China: A century of revolution' it is very thorough, covering most significant changes in China from 1911 all the way 90’s. In the third part of the documentary “Born Under the Red Flag” you will most likely find what you are looking for.
If you have access to a VPN can stream the documentary from YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHfXzG46faA or you can always try to find a torrent online.
I would also like to recommend the book “The Great Wall: China against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000” by Julia Lovell it is a very good book for bot academics and normal people. In the chapter titled “Great Wall, the Great Mall, and the Great Firewall” is filled with plenty of “inside information” concerning the political manifestations of the last three decades.
Lectures 3 and 4 not coming through
OK now, but disappointed in the content.
I recently finished reading a book dealing with East/West learning modalities, and I am struck by the nature of the complexity of language to shape our understanding of say "A New History of China." I interpret the "ordinary" as those "below" or the "average" Chinese person, but then my modality of understanding this finer point is naturally shaped by the fact that I am of a western bent. Therefore, my question is, "To what degree does the use of these unique data sets represent a social scientist's interpretation versus a historian's?" Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your work on this subject. Would I be correct in saying that as regards the lecture(s) for week one that social mobility was a "micro-foundation" of the practice of the "macro structure" of the Chinese civil service exam?
http://lbxml.ust.hk/th_imgo/b1190552.pdf
Meanwhile, to my knowledge, the Dengkelu data that professor Ho used have NOT been coded/digitalized yet although we can find some scanned images of Dengkelu.also i noticed that farmers were not considering when looking at the most prestigious university in france, and yet in the second comparison they were. farmers seems like a vague category to me either way, as income could vary greatly.
A comparison of vocabulary sizes between a typical Chinese student and a person educated in the Anglophone tradition is rather flawed. The Chinese figures (3500 for China and 4000 for HK) refer to the number of characters, whereas the Anglophone figures refer to the number of words.
In modern Chinese, characters rarely stand alone; they combine to form new words with nuanced meanings, somewhat analogical to the combination of letters in English, except that Chinese characters individually have their own meanings.
The Chinese figures also refer to a student’s active character set: characters that he not only recognizes but also can actively reproduce and use, whereas the Anglophone figures refer to a student’s passive vocabulary, as tested in standardized tests such as the SAT.
Alex -- I'm a native speaker of Chinese. It makes almost no sense to talk about the number of words one knows in Chinese. The 20000 most used English words, translated into Chinese, will be readily understood by a large majority of students in any Chinese high school. But this does not mean an average Chinese is more educated in language, for Chinese has its own intricacies that require much learning.
As far as I know, it is nearly impossible for a low income family to afford studying for and taking exams. Studying usually requires hiring teachers, and taking the exams requires expensive traveling cost. There are rare cases of sponsorship, or servant's children being allowed to study with their landlord's children, but in the ballpark, people who could afford taking the exam at all are either high income or have upper class connections.
What about the example of Admiral He? He was a castrated servant. He was an influential official, who braved the ocean to explore.
It certainly was an interesting lecture comprised of a wealth of data to support some of the claims made by the research team that been said there are some gaps. For one education is not a neutral concept, there is no description of the topics that involve the different categories beyond literacy. It would seem that it was Confucian concepts the ones being studied and their value to govern a society as a hole is questionable (not that I am expert on Confucian education).
Second, there is no description of how this system was distributed among the different ethnic groups that comprised late imperial China. It seems that the main group that benefits are the Han population, thus the 10% mentioned is 1/10 of this particular ethnic group. I am not knowledgeable enough to make state thas as definite claim, but I am sure ethnicity was a major divisor on imperial China.
In doing so the contrast between social mobility would be reduce since many poor families or second sons of wealthy ones opted for careers on the clergy and in it had the chance to greatly improve their situation, through a merit base system, or at least more so than the strict society of the rest of Europe. As evidence of this, it can be seen that some Popes came from families with no ties to the nobility.
Based on the very good lecture, think of advancement in Imperial China as advancement based on the same level as advancement in a university for a professorship. In the High Middle Age in the West, specifically England under Henry V, the self-made men could be considered people who were wealthy enough to not be ignored by the nobility.
I am enjoying looking at these data sets and a different view on the determinants of social mobility. However, I have an issue with the denominator for all these data sets. Access to the exam 'ladder' is only possible for literate males. What proportion of the total population is this?
Especially when doing cross-cultural comparison (the French data), we have absolutely no data on the children of Chinese agricultural labourers who attain any educational status.
If the denominator in not the same in all cases, then the conclusions are very distorted and in fact, inaccurate. Or am I missing something here?
Good observation. As I understand it, the economic and political bonds that held late imperial China together were rather loose. Therefore, to what end(s) did the examination process act as some kind of cultural force to bind society?
My point exactly Rainerr. If the denominator is not the same the comparison can be wildly inaccurate.
“There were let's say three step ladder of examinations with the bottom degree being called the the Shengyuan or Xiucai Degree, so that of which there are about 500,000 such licentiates, about 50,000 Juren or equivalents. About one-third are juren the other two-thirds are gongsheng tribute students and 4,000 jinshi.”
生员 = shēng yuán = scholar preparing for imperial examinations (in former times)
秀才 = xiù cai = a person who has passed the county level imperial exam (historical) / scholar / skillful writer / fine talent
举人 = jǔ rén = graduate / successful candidate in the imperial provincial examination
贡生 = gòng shēng = candidate for the Imperial Examination proposed by a tributary state
进士 = jìn shì = successful candidate in the highest imperial civil service examination / palace graduate
Passage 2:“He collected systematic biographical data using either examination achievement books called Dengkelu or using sort of government curricula vita called Yuli.”
Dengkelu (等课录)
等 = děng = class / rank / grade /
课 = kè = subject / course / CL: 門|门[men2] / class / lesson / CL:堂[tang2],節|节[jie2] / to levy / tax / form of divination
录 = lù = diary / record / to hit / to copy
Yuli – I don’t know what “yuli” is in Chinese. Does anyone else know? If so, please add it.
I found your "cleanup" very helpful. Usually the Coursera transcripts have errors, to a greater or lesser extent. I think it depends on the material, the teacher's diction, etc. Sometimes they have indications of "cough" and "inaudible." I have had to go back and forth many times between lecture and transcript.
In this class we have an additional aid in that the slides are very detailed.
Thanks for doing the work to clean up those parts of the transcript.
'Now, what Jiang Qin did (I was privileged to sit on his committee) was that, he, under James (Chung’s) direction, not from us, I'm ashamed to say, he collected similar information to Professor Ho's but did this systematically, did this in a data base which he can in the future put online and make available to the academy at large to examine. And using a collection of examination essays put together over a long period of time by the Shanghai Library, he was able to get the the final examinations and the family background from nearly 12,000 Jinshi which is about half the total Jinshi during the Qing. And from these exam essay data he constructed a representative sample of 4000 Juren from 18 provinces who passed the provincial exams between 1789 and 1895. And in his thesis, he does many calculations, all of which sort of elaborate on Professor Ho's findings.'
I think that the statistics and categories we are using in this class need to be carefully interpreted because of some of the issues you identify.
Just take data from the US census. Until the 1800s Native Americans were not counted at all. African American slaves were counted but not individually named. While they were considered property not citizens by slave owners, slave owners did want the slaves counted in the census because benefits could accrue to their states depending on population. The concept of what defines a given "race" has changed over time, too, and so have categories in the US census. So, comparing from one decennial census to the next is quite tricky. Even now, undercounting of poor people occurs. [http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-01.htm]
There really is no value-free scholarship. The best we can do (I think) is be aware that we all have biases and that the even most "quantitative" of data can deceive us and that we are shaped so much by culture, education, nationality and historical period. The very questions we decide to study are shaped by values--even those in the "hard" sciences.
Brenda,
I think that this has been a weakness in many undertakings. For example, "introduction to philosophy" when I took it years ago was really introduction to WESTERN philosophy, etc. and, even within a given nation, history can translate to being the history of the dominant group--racially, religiously, whatever.
I think that classes such as this have a lot to recommend them because we can be exposed to how other people think. Also, sources are becoming more available. There is so much that is in the public domain, now, that we never could have obtained years ago. Even if it were out there, how would I have known to try to get it through the library or whatever?
I just wish I had the money to travel and live in other places. I did live in Mexico for almost a year but that was a very long time ago. I envy my son who is living in China now. I have visited once but 10 days is not sufficient to learn about a society.
In any case, I am enjoying the class and the discussions.
The elite class in China is still sending their children to study in Western universities such as Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge. Most of them study business, economics and finance.
1978 | 860 | 248 | 28.84 |
1979 | 1777 | 231 | 18.16 |
1980 | 2124 | 162 | 13.46 |
1981 | 2922 | 1143 | 23.22 |
1982 | 2326 | 2116 | 38.96 |
1983 | 2633 | 2303 | 49.07 |
1984 | 3073 | 2290 | 54.04 |
1985 | 4888 | 1424 | 48.13 |
1986 | 4676 | 1388 | 44.72 |
1987 | 4703 | 1605 | 43.06 |
1988 | 3786 | 3000 | 47.12 |
1989 | 3329 | 1753 | 47.61 |
1990 | 2950 | 1593 | 48.08 |
1991 | 2900 | 2069 | 49.65 |
1992 | 6540 | 3611 | 50.39 |
1993 | 10742 | 5128 | 49.92 |
1994 | 19071 | 4230 | 43.25 |
1995 | 20381 | 5750 | 40.17 |
1996 | 20905 | 6570 | 38.66 |
1997 | 22410 | 7130 | 37.58 |
1998 | 17622 | 7379 | 38.05 |
1999 | 23749 | 7748 | 37.36 |
2000 | 38989 | 9121 | 34.92 |
2001 | 83973 | 12243 | 29.36 |
2002 | 125179 | 17945 | 25.01 |
2003 | 117307 | 20152 | 23.34 |
2004 | 114682 | 24726 | 23.03 |
2005 | 118515 | 34987 | 24.02 |
2006 | 134000 | 42000 | 25.09 |
I got the distinct feeling that the studies deal with the dominant Han group.
When (what year or dynasty?) were these imperial exams organized and administered? I am interested in the nature of the exam's origins? Also, what body or group was responsible for creating such exams? Thank you.
Imperial examination was established in 605 during the Sui Dynasty, the system was used only on a relatively small scale during the Tang Dynasty, although extensively expanded during the reign of Wu Zetian. Per Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China by Ann Paludan ISBN 0-500-05090-2 on page 97.
My thanks to everyone for adding clarity to the studies. Sara
Even in the West, I would argue that a unified ideal of culture ended during the mass printing of books. The 'early modern Europe where Latin-based Christian high culture defined elite culture' existed only in the absence of legitimate competitors. Afterward, regional cultures were able to develop, such as German or English. But, even these are based on similar roots. Can anyone say there is European elite culture? Maybe, but only after two world wars.
Dear 张锋, Do you mean the Western perspective of social stratification is based on wealth and, in traditional Chinese culture; social stratification was based on political influence which is based on closeness to the center of political power, i.e. the Emperor or the Politburo? If that is your argument, then I agree with you.
Dear 张锋, Generally, Western power was based on access to wealth; however, sometimes that wealth was based on political or religious power. As an example, the bishop of Salzburg, in Austria, controlled the salt trade and then his illegitimate sons bought positions in the Catholic Church to cement power.
Does anyone know about artists in China? How are they funded. Many seem to have almost small towns of workers for thier artwork. I am wondering about contemporary artists, do they need to come from wealthy families or are they also a part of the ability to transcend their sicial background?
Thanks
I wondered the same thing. Wasn't passing exams costly not just beforehand but after as well? In his history of the Qing (China's Last Empire) Rowe writes "he [the county magistrate] might well be expected to make personal contributions to any local project that needed doing, or even to help make up tax shortfalls out if his own pocket...." (while admittedly also being able to come up with various informal sources of income above and beyond official ones). I understand that all officials were sent to districts away from their homes. However surely not all postings were equally desirable or profitable. Who received the best ones? Do the data show postings were distributed based on ability, or were the wealthiest and best connected given the choice assignments while the newcomers received the ones no one else wanted? Perhaps the long term socioeconomic success or failures of families of the new elites shows something?
Thank you, Instructor Buyung Ho Lee. I think that would be most interesting. In my preliminary study I found that geographical proximity to imperial capital and court may be an important factor. Map bellow demonstrates that compact group of eight provinces produced nearly 64% of all jinshi of empire. That could be significant. As source I used was theTable No 8 from Professor Ping-ti Ho's monography.
Thank you for sharing this map. I wonder is it proximity to the capital or proximity to the coast? Maybe more merchants and traders, more money there? If so maybe things have not changed so much over time?
“One of the unintended consequences of the examinations was the creation of legions of classically literate men who used their linguistic talents for a variety of nonofficial purposes: from physicians to pettifoggers, from fiction writers to examination essay teachers, and from ritual specialists to lineage agents.”
http://www.princeton.edu/~elman/documents/Civil%20Service%20Examinations.pdf
Elman cites, in particular, novelists such as Pu Songling (1640–1715) who took a very skeptical view of the Chinese examination system (having personally failed several times) and then brought their skepticism to a broader audience. He also mentions that while the exams were for men only, plenty of women informally educated themselves in the process of helping their sons or husbands prepare.
Do the students and faculty here have any thoughts about the broader social impact of these “exam failures” on Chinese society -- and of the newly-educated women who never had the chance to fail?
Thanks very much!
Hi Matthew, Maybe a professor can confirm this, but the way I understood the first week's lecture, even though only about 10% of the male population could aspire to enter into civil service in late imperial China, this still represented a larger percent of the population than the royalty/nobility in Europe during the late Middle Ages/ Early Renaissance. Of course, I believe things had changed a good deal in parts of the West by the end of the Dynastic period (1900's), but this has not yet been addressed.
The introductory lecture/ slides state that we are using big data to study history from below not to be confused with history of ordinary people. Would you please clarify these two types of historical methods and the specific distinctions you are drawing here related to China? Thanks. Very interesting class...
Thank you but I am still confused. The thread to which you provided the link did not really answer my question (or maybe i am just obtuse): how does history from below differ from history of ordinary peiople? I have tried looking on the web and found several sources that seemed to imply they are one and the same or at least overlap.
For example, this British historians site http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/themes/history_from_below.html
I understand we are using big data and a more quantitative approach moving from below up, but why isn't this history of ordinary people?
Macarena,
What you said about history of ordinary people is what I think it is. Also, I take it the "new history" is what is being done with the " big data". ( do not know at all if I am right on this one)
But, how is the "history of ordinary people" different from "history from the bottom up?" (from below)
I looked these terms up online and the "ordinary people" and from the "bottom up" seem to be equated in what I found, but our professor is not doing that here, according to what he said in the lecture and on the slides.
I really wanted to get the professor to define the terms and distinguish among them. The thread that he links back to also is unclear (to me). Maybe I will have to ask the question there again, too.
By the way, I took a wonderful class on history of women in the civil rights movement a few months ago on Coursera. So much is being uncovered/rediscovered about more little-known figures who laid the groundwork for the more well-known figures. And, even events that are emblematic are not necessarily all that they have seemed. It is a wonderful class and, if you like history, and the class is offered again, I would heartily recommend it.
· Why do some people rise to the top, when others do not?
· Why is wealth distributed more unequally in some societies than others?
Thanks. I wondered, too, if from the bottom up ( from below) is something like inductive learning as opposed to deductive learning.
Thanks, Professor Lee; it’s a wonderful presentation of week 1. The vast data points analyzed by the project certainly provide an insight with greater depth of the subject.
I wish the following 3 weeks may provide more information on these:
(1) In the third video of week 1, you mentioned that there were 5 million test takers (except the 2 million in 1850), and 4 thousand Jinshi were selected. Then later it was 24 thousand Jinshis total in the 268 years of Ching dynasty. Does that translate to the test only being held every 44+ years? (24 thousand divided by 4 thousand applies and leads to 268 years divided by 6 .)
(2) I assume the numbers of test takers were calculated either by estimation or derivation, so I wonder if the same rule can be applied further to calculate the percentage of them from the 3 categories adopted by Mr. Ho Ping-ti. Then these data will be useful to further elucidate the “real chances” of social mobility from the 3 groups, rather than the end results as the table presented.
(3) I wonder to what level that the test passers were being offered a better life, like a government job, did it only stop at the Juren level?
(4) You mentioned about the system offered an objective social testing, but my past learning seems to indicate there was somewhat subjective opinion by the test readers in determining the winners, and sometimes the emperor or other power players can also influence the results.
I truly enjoy the presentation.
Sincerely,
Hi everyone, Are there any lecture transcripts available other than the partial transcript for a 'a difficult lecture 3' as given elsewhere in this forum? I am hard of hearing so I tend to rely on such materials??? I might be missing an obvious link somewhere.
Any help appreciated Jools
Icon next to the lecture link. Not the first one that looks like a turned down page (those are the slides). Transcript is the second one--looks like a series of horizontal lines.
Thanks Rosanne, don't know how I missed that!! Anyhow sorted now!!! Many thanks, much appreciated.
That would be 'glass ceiling'
Whatever the agenda of the teachers, I do think that we can overstate the ethnocentrism of others while not being cognizant of our own. I, too, am having a problem with some of the teacher's assumptions and comparisons and data in weeks one and two, but I also don't want to overstate upward mobility (or the ack of it) in my society--the US-- in its current iteration.
I wrote on this same topic several days ago on another thread that promptly died, so I'll paste it here, concurring with Kenneth's original post and the title of this thread:
I wonder whether our professor presented enough evidence to make his case. His Case, as I think I heard it, was that late Imperial China was characterized by greater social mobility than the West in comparable centuries. Some of you above have written about how we should define and measure social mobility, but I'm saying that even if we take our professor's terms as he defines them, did he present evidence that proves His Case, or did the evidence show that China was relatively immobile.
I think it was the latter because this is what I thought I heard: Did he say that only the top 10% of the society, as measured by achieved literacy, which correlates with the wealth needed to engage tutors for the examination system, could ever aspire to the Shengyuan - Juren - Jinshi ladder? He called that top 10% 'examination-level educated adult males' in Lecture 1.3, 2:56. Then, I know he showed a relatively high degree of mobility within that top tier, but it's only 10%, with the other 90% being mostly rural peasantry generation after generation. Actually, it's only 5% : 95%, given the exclusion of women.
Or did he prove that the 10% tier was widely open to the aspirational members of the lower 90% of men? I don't think so. I think he emphasized that the lower or less-successful-for-the-previous-three-generations within the top 10% had a reasonable chance of reaching the top 1% Shengyuan or top 0.1% Juren or top 0.01% Jinshi. Those outside the top 10% had zero chance, as far as I understand it.
Contrast that with the West, where even if we ignore the issues of whether we should measure social mobility only by entrance to the civil service, we have evidence at odds with our professor's conclusions, it seems to me. In Lecture 1.4 he presented data around 11:20 showing that the top 11.3% of French society filled 55.7% or 43.9% of the spots at Les Grandes Ecoles. And around 11:53 he shows the top 9% of French society filled 65% of spots at L’Ecole Nationale d’Administration. But I ask you, doesn’t this reflect more social mobility than in China, where 10% filled 100% of the spots in the civil service?
Did our professor present evidence that showed greater European social mobility while characterizing it as showing greater Chinese social mobility? Wang Zuo Fa, above, has already concluded that the West had greater mobility, but here I think I've shown it using our professors own definitions and data. What do you think?
Very interesting. At one time there were exams for US federal jobs but no job guarantees. In NYC there are still exams for cops and firefighters. No guarantee of a job. Of course you also need a background check and physical and psych. exam before even getting into the police academy. Interestingly, in NYC on the police dept. they also have exams for sergeant and lieutenant and captain. Where I live now these jobs are strictly appointive. (In NYC police dept., however, detective jobs are not based on exams). The whole exam paradigm is very interesting. There has been lots of litigation surrounding civil service exams in the US also.
I noticed that the distribution of students from "commercial" families is pretty low. And I heard Professor mentioned that these families were more "shopkeepers" kind. If I didn't get it wrong, those parents who were big bosses from huge entrepreneurs etc were sorted to the "cadre" kind? Otherwise it does not make sense that students from "commercial" families are so few, especially when China's economy has been booming for a while.
In lecture 2.1 a comparison is made between access to elite universities for children from lower income classes in the US, HK and China. In my mind the US were taken as an example for all Western societies, while it is a known fact that this is the most unequal OECD country, especially as far as education is concerned. It would be interesting to see comparative data from other OECD countries as well. Also, the link between the occupation of the parents and entrance to elite universities in China and parental income and university entrance in the US is rather tenuous. Although intuitive I would have liked to see some form of proof that this link can be actually made.
Wealth is becoming more and more concentrated in the US and wages are stagnant, especially for lower-paid workers. I think that a comparison to a few Western countries would have been in order--for example, one with a different admission system to the US.
Yes, the US has a very good higher education system but it is also being affected by budget cuts and the problems of the school systems below it. Using the variables he did, Prof. Lee might have missed inequalities in the US system AND China's system. It would be interesting to see data by race and ethnicity. Ethnicity data are available on the registration cards that Ptof. Lee showed us for the universities and in the US.
However, I wonder, too, if the availability of "matching" data, as he sees this, would have guided him and a desire to illustrate a point by comparing China to a large rival. I am not saying this is a primary motive, by any means, but something to think about.
China's economic reform really got started in the 1980s, so diversity of parent's education will only show up in the last ten years. So we will have more meaningful comparison in the next ten years. As in the case of Hong Kong the current data would miss out the children of the elites that enroll in foreign elite universities.
In the lecture there was some suggestion that Beijing University seeks some diversity in their admissions process and I am curious how they achieve that diversity and whether admissions policies can be further altered to achieve greater representation from student candidates from socio-economic backgrounds or geographic locations that are currently underrepresented.
In the US, admissions directors in private and public universities are interested in achieving 'diversity' and use SAT or ACT scores in conjunction with other factors such as GPA, special talents, high school, student essays, etc. Private elite schools have perhaps the greatest desire and ability to achieve 'diversity' than the elite state publics which are compelled to accept a higher proportion from within the State than from outside. Within public systems, admission policies are geared to get diverse representation throughout the state. Thus in all cases diversity is considered a desirable goal in terms of admissions policy.
Here is a link to a profile of Yale's Freshman Class ( the class of 2015):
http://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Yale%20Class%20of%202015%20Profile.pdf
13.5 percent were legacy students and this is typical of many elite schools and has a lot to do with alumni gifts and contributions and the economics of higher education than anything else.
But then let's look at diversity:
1. Roughly equal percentage of makes and females.
2. 60 % from public high schools vs 40% private
3. students from 49 states, 35% from Northeast, 13.5 from mid-west, 10 from south, 7 mid-Atlantic, 17.4 West
4. 13.3% were students who were the first in their family to attend a four year university
5. ethnic background: 9.3 % black, 19.8 percent Asian, 11 % Hispanic, 58 % white and 4% Native American
Diversity is something that Yale's admissions office considers important. But of course there are limitations to this diversity. They are accepting students that they expect to succeed and graduate.
The Admissions Office at the University of California at Berkeley offers this explanation on their undergraduate selection process:
http://admissions.berkeley.edu/selectsstudents
'UC Berkeley pioneered the holistic review process at UC (now adapted systemwide), enabling us to admit a diverse undergraduate class representing 53 states/commonwealths and 74 countries, with 17% who are first-generation college-going and 65% who receive financial aid. “Holistic review” refers to the process of evaluating applications, described below.
The goal of our selection process is to identify applicants who are most likely to contribute to Berkeley’s intellectual and cultural community and, ultimately, to the State of California, the nation, and the world.'
Is there any discussion in Chinese higher education about crafting admissions policy that perhaps better promote diversity and overcomes some of the statistical trends that seem to be working against candidates from certain provinces and certain socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
I can appreciate the perspective that suggests economic and gender diversity in more "modern" times in Chinese institutions of higher learning has increased; however, I am wondering what role - if any - ethnic diversity within such settings plays as regards the preeminent role of education in this "New History?"
Actually, I had a mixed experience. I attended a second/maybe almost third tier undergrad school because the financial aid was great and I was in the honors program. My education was really good in the honors classes (not stuck in some if the generic core courses that were very large), really good in my major and just Ok in the other core courses. My first shot at grad school was definitely a bad move to a second tier school.
But, I really hit my stride in a top tier grad program in my field at a top tier state school. I would not worry too much about the undergrad school if you plan grad/professional school and can get very good grades. Going as high as you can afford in grad school is then a good second step. My son used the same strategy--got a full tuition scholarship to my undergrad school, ironically, and then ended up top-of the-line in his field in grad school. He is now living in China, of all places. One reason to take this course!
The vast majority of low-income, high-achieving students do not apply to any selective college - http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/low-income-high-achieving-hoxby-avery
Dear Wai Yip Tung, You are correct. Many Americans has have negative wealth. It is called being underwater on your mortgage. For example, a house hold has $120,000 net tax income per year., which is $10,000 net tax per month. Bought a house for $1,000,000 on a zero % down liar loan at 10% compounded interest. The family expenses at $9,000 per month on food, parties, insurance, gasoline, TV bill, telephone bill, and other non-recurring expenses the house was reevaluated to be worth $ 799,000. Even thought the family looks like a upper middle class or lower upper class family with many gadgets. Thier family's wealth is minus $670,000. With only $1,000 to pay the mortgage if they keep their life style.
This family will deny that there is a problem with thier lifestyle and blame someone else.
Having zero wealth and zero cash, are two different things.
For example, wealth is the accumulation of cash in the bank, real estate, car, stock, and other tangible or intangible property that someone is willing to buy in an arms length transaction.
Cash is the means to buy or have access property such as mentioned above.
In the USA, a means tested group receive free food (SNAP), subsidized housing (rent contol apartment in New York City), and of course free primary and secondary education (Public schools). Also, there are means tested; not academic test scholarships or grants; race-based scholarships, and other support; for higher education (U of Berkeley).
Now, I an not saying the poor have an economic easy path but the still have to make at least a passsing grade at the institution and be on good behavior. Then there is Medicaid, a means tested hospital payment.
So poor have no accumulated wealth but have cash (from the US government) for services. If the person fills out the appropriate forms.
The wealth taking away after the bubble burst was just paper inflationary appreciation. It was not actual improvements to the property. The demand curve lowered but the supply curve increased.
WEALTHY AMERICANS
It is well known that America has a large number of wealthy
persons. Generally speaking, the people of Europe are found to be
foremost in amassing fortunes. With the help of new inventions and
technology, the people of Europe see to it that the world market does
not go out of their hands. Despite this, it would not be wrong to say
that Europe lags far behind America in the race for wealth. There are,
of course, some reasons for this. The people there are caught in the
spell of money more than the Europeans, and it has been found that,
once large quantities of wealth accumulate, they tend to go on
increasing. This becomes understandable if a long-range view is
taken. Now, some of these Americans have grown so inordinately
rich—so we learn from a speech by President Roosevelt, the Head of
the United States—that it will not be improper to enact a law enabling
the State to limit this acquisition of wealth. He said that one might not
think it wrong for a man to own one or two million pounds; but that
hoarded fortunes have so exceeded this volume and so spread in
extent that there is a large number of Americans who have a
hundred times this sum. These multi-millionaires, President Roosevelt
has found, might some day influence State authority. With the power
of their money they can influence, as they deem fit, such institutions
of the State as courts of justice, and elections to a municipality or the
Senate. Such a development, it is felt, will be dangerous, and limiting
by law the accumulation of wealth is contemplated. An individual may
not hold more than £10,00,000 and whatever he may have in excess,
he must distribute as he likes among his relatives and others. These
thoughts of President Roosevelt have greatly perturbed American
multi-millionaires.
Indian Opinion, 26-5-1906
While Only U. S. historians can throw light on what Mr. Roosevelt had stated at the relevant time, the question of the possibility of wealthy Americans influencing state authority might be relevant even today.
1) Wealth distribution, as presented, does not provide enough information for comparison. It is important to understand what the purchasing power is within the local and global economic markets. 2) The whole redistribution of housing also skews the comparison, since China followed the Soviet model of housing distribution during privatization when the houses were basically given to the families who were living there under the previous system. This privatization artificially created the situation where the majority of the population now owns their home. Again, the same phenomenon happened in Russia, and China followed this model. Thus, such statistics gives a very biased view. 3) The fact that more people own 2 or more properties in China is also taken out of context. In China (like in Russia) real estate is the safest investment to make, unlike in the West with well established financial institutions that make investing in other asset classes more desireable and accessable to the population.
For the definition of wealth it is helpful to refer to Wolff's papers which was quoted as the source for this research. He defines wealth as marketable (fungible) assets less debts. He does not regard consumables such as washing machines, cars, TV etc as contributing to an individual's wealth. (http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf)
Correct, The middle class person may have a negative net wealth due to debt and easy credit. The homeless person has not debt and the paid off asset of a cardboard box. so, net wealth the homeless person is better of wealth wise. By, not in a million years would I change places with the homeless person because the status, access to possible improvement, access to credit, and a potential to float above water.
In the second video lecture the county of Shuangcheng is taken to be representative for the whole of china. The teachers use this to substantiate the claim to the double pattern of wealth distribution in late imperial China. But how representative is this county really?
This question is bourne by the very nature of the settlements there. This is an area in which the state is actively engaged in establishing, promoting and maintaining the double pattern. How do we know Shuangcheng was not the anomaly rather than the norm?
Well basically everyone became a home owner virtually overnight. China has a huge population and the land is comparatively scarce. With the economy booming, people wanted to buy flats in the city, and prices went up a lot. People from the country moved to the city to work as labor and, although they couldn't afford a flat in the city, they could remit money to their families and buy a home in the country when they returned.
For much of the period when China was occupied by Japan, Chiang Kai-Shek, who took over as leader after the death of Sun Yat-Sen, seemed to be more interested in defeating Mao Zedong rather than the Japanese. There were several attempts at rapprochement after the Long March but these failed. After the defeat of Japan, civil war resumed between the Nationalists and the Communists. The Communist general Lin Biao led a brilliant campaign defeating the Nationalists in north China, then north east China and then taking the other cities of Nanjing, Chongqing and Shanghai. By then (1949) Chiang Kai-Shek had fled to Taiwan. {I hope this helps}
Japanese colonialism is the short answer.
I am looking for internal factors rather than just external ones.
We have discarded Marxism, communism and central planning for being mere dogmas. Likewise we shall have to jettison the dogma of market capitalism if we come to the conclusion that market capitalism is not able to fulfill the societal objective of maximum good of maximum number. Any rational society cannot tolerate the position where a system takes care of a minority of its members.
Randomness is at the heart of the present system based on market capitalism. The laws of nature suggest that randomness is not the preferred mode of nature. Ultimately we shall have to apply all our knowledge and all our computing power to move towards a system where each human being on the face of earth is able to realise his or her full potential and could live a dignified life. We can achieve peace on earth if we consider human kind as a living organism, a biological whole.
In Lecture 4.1, Tilley's definition of government is paraphrased as "...the organization that controls the principal concentrated means of coercion within the population." Does this interpretation mean to point out that in addition to "situational-outcome" structure that revolutions must likewise achieve some established "equilibrium" between the ideological and socialistic tendencies of society to bring about regime change? Thank you.
I joined this course out of curiosity, enjoying it, but now am I still wondering how I always thought of China as been‘Communist’, Tight lipped, Human rights abuse, Corrupt and Large.
As the course comes to a close, I am asking myself a couple of questions that are derived from my exposure to this social interpretation of Chinese history.
First, given the political primacy of the Chinese revolution, was there something about either Japanese imperialism or the nature of other countries' societies (i.e. USA, UK, Germany, Russia, etc.) during the World War II era that illicited a desire in the hearts and minds of the Chinese elites to bring about some realignment of government?
Second, given the more "equitable" distribution of wealth in China and barring external forces associated with China's experiences during the World War II era, what internal forces created this revolution in China? (I imagine Part II may explore this subject.)
Third, given the unique social and economic underpinnings in Chinese history, was the Communist's takeover of China a "revolution" or "insurrection"?
Thank you.
Make that three questions!
Undecided as of yet. The course is statistics in my opinion and not history.
Most definitely. I have found the use of big data has put a different light on areas which are of particular interest to me about China as well as for research for a biography I am writing.
Yes! I learned new information, which is always good.
I think this course is valuable to those with an existing solid foundation of Chinese history and one is able to interrupt the data though a lens colored by some knowledge of other research done on these topics.
No one piece of research can do more than add to a small piece to the overall puzzle of the social history of 300 years of Chinese history.
The data presented was interesting, although the analysis often seemed to require acceptance of huge leaps of faith to come to the conclusions reached from what the data (and other research on topics) actually showed.
If one does not already have some understanding of Chinese history and society, I doubt one could take away much from this course. But for historians and China specialists, it is surely worth the time. I guess I would fall somewhere in-between being a China specialist and having a casual interest in the topic.
I will probably take part II, overall thought provoking and a source for some good reference material.
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Additional details: This is the only unlocked forum I could find to post a thank you. I enjoyed your objective approach to the subject of wealth aquisition & distribution in China. The research methods were inovative and compelling. The lectures were well done and the course materials and quizzes functioned smoothly. As an adult I'm responsible for identifying when you moved from objective to subjective analysis. And, in my opinion, you did that a number of times when comparing China's wealth distribuion to that of the West. The two most egregious where when you said something to the effect that in China when you lose your job you go home in the west you go sleep in a box. That ignores the extensive Govt, faith based, and charitable infrastructure for helping those in need. The second occured when you touted Chinese access to education for all yet ignored the unrest (sometimes violent) in the outlying districts becuase of a perceived sense of second class citizenship and opportunity. Thanks again for an informative and enjoyable course.
I also wish to thank you for this fascinating course.
Issues with some of the quiz and exam questions notwithstanding, I have also found the course very informative and look forward to its future continuation. Thanks so much for sharing your group's research and putting this together. I am sure many eyes have been opened as a result.
I would like to thanks the professors and staff for this course. For me it was the first time to learn something about the history of China and I really liked it and so I am looking for the others course. So thank you all.
非常感谢你们, Thank you very much for the interesting lectures! Looking forward to the next course!
Thank you, really enjoy this course and learn a lot
First of all thank you very much for the course. I learned a lot and there were a lot of new things that only by looking at the data could have been found. Congratulations.
My suggestion is that you should provide the right answers for the quizzes after the hard deadline, so people can learn further from their mistakes and not guessing.
Second, make the questions less vague. You had to correct nearly every quiz and the final exam because of ambiguity of questions. On the other hand it was great to see how flexible you were and that you took on the criticism. Not many course instructors would have done this. Thanks
However, don't be too generous. In all honesty my grade was 88%. I actually would have deserved 92% because I got 1 question wrong which one could argue about, but two questions I surely got wrong. With your generous gesture to add 15% I am now at 100%. Nice but ... Don't be too generous, otherwise the course becomes too easy.
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Gleb,
EdX allows you to determine your screen names. Coursera should do this. Anonymous postings are hard to keep track of if there are multiple Anons posting. Technically, on Coursera, we are not supposed to do what Lizzie does but many people do it. The problem as anonymous above states is that it changes in all of your courses which can be a bummer if you do not mind posting with a true name in one and not another.
Also, not only can course staff see the full name of anonymous posters they can delete, and EDIT ALL posts without noting that in the post. Even community teaching assistants (students from previous sessions of a class who act as unpaid helpers and discussion prodders/moderators in follow-up sessions) can see a student's true identity even if the student posts anonymously and can also edit and delete posts. Staff and TAs can also lock threads and staff can delete threads.
I have not seen this abused much but it is hard to know how much editing goes on. Coursera should be much more transparent on this, IMHO.
Anonymous2
Don't give up on Coursera, anonymous Gleb! I am happy my second course was not the first. I might have been discouraged, also. Like Lizzie--who has taken far more classes than I--says, the classes very. I have had one "bad" class, several good and several excellent classes. In fact, the latter are probably the greatest number. The technical quality varies, too. This class is not the best, not the worst, technical quality but some are more animated and varied in type of presentation. I think various universities put greater or lesser resources into their classes, videography, etc.
I just feel that I have jumped into the middle of a conversation here without knowing what came before!
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If this page is the main page for your course (the web address ends in :Main
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If you do create the first page for this course, then please also do the following:
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I appear to be still unable to post, despite the fact that it is (I think) August 26 in HK, the exam is over and the results have been visible for at least half an hour. When will general discussions be resumed?
I agree with you completely about the ambiguity of all three questions. With respect to the first, however, I did check The Ladder of Success, and the author does say on p. 2 that
"The concept of equality in its ancient Greek and modern Western sense is almost entirely lacking in feudal and post-feudal China. The point of departure in the Confucian social ideology is that all things, including human beings, are by nature unequal. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) and his chief exponents believed that men differ greatly in intelligence, ability, and moral character."
The problem with the question of course is the type of (in)equality is not clarified. Many of us, I am sure, thought of social inequality, led in that direction by the focus of the course! Silly us, we should have been thinking of inequality of natural abilities!
TheLadder of Success is in the "Optional Readings" listed in the Course Outline for week 1. It appears to have been somewhat more than optional. The book was published in 1962, in unlikely to be in man libraries, yet is still locked up so to speak by copyright restrictions. I ordered a copy from Amazon, which arrived near the end of this course.
It is also available via several online academic publishng sources (at what I regard as inflated prices).
It is an excellent book by the way. I read the required sections and then some. It is a shame that it is so difficult to access.
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Additional details: Prof. James, Thanks for your wisdom. Best regards, LB
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The interpretation of the data that there was quite a bit of social mobility in China during this time seems a little skewed.
From the data presented, over 50% of Jinshi holders were members of families with direct ancestors who were also Jinshi holders during both the Ming and Qing, and as the dynasties matured the numbers went up and social mobility declined. It was not very surprising in the early days of a dynasty there was increased social mobility as the old elites who were loyal to the previous regime would be culled, but while it appears (from the data presented and what I have read from other sources) there was some limited amount of social mobility created by the exam system, the amount of social mobility probably should not be exaggerated or over emphasized.
All valid points, but my question for you all is: Is that enough to discredit the Imperial examination system as a whole?
The way I see it the IES -in spite all the comments above- provides a clear gateway to social mobility. Sure, the son of a rich official would have advantage over a mere peasant, but the possibility of social mobility would still be latent to everyone, and that is - in my opinion- a trait not shared by other feudal societies on similar time periods.
A clear evidence of this can be found on the abundant amount of folktales concerning Imperial Students, many of which are centered on the adventures of students of humble origins. Meanwhile one has to search very hard to find popular references to social mobility on say, feudal Europe.
I guess what I am trying to say is, that the Imperial Examination System is still a large accomplishment and failing to grasp its role as primordial gateway to social mobility in an otherwise very static society is a crude reductionism at best.
I also found this comparison to be not very convincing.
sorry,it is Qing,not Qin. And in Yuan Dynasty, lots of Hans are killed. It's impossible for a people from Han attend government.
I think also that the ability to be allowed to sit the exam is key. In imperial china, for around half of the applicants it was not who you knew but what you knew whereas in France I am betting it was a much higher percentage of who you knew, having the ability to pass the test means nothing if you are not allowed to sit the exam in the first place
I also don’t think that feasible is the comparison of social mobility between China and Western world. The social structure in Ming and Qing was partly different from that in Western world.
As I searched online, I find this comprehensive classification of classes in Qing Dynasty:
The privileged (upper) Classes: Landowners including Emperor and family at peak of social hierarchy (Scholar bureaucrats, including shengyuan and higher degree holders);
The middle Classes: Commoners (based on Confucian traditions), including peasants (the largest class and highest among commoner classes), merchants (ranked at bottom), artisans and workers (lower status but higher income than peasants);
The lower classes: Armed Forces and “Mean people”, such as slaves, indentured servants, entertainers, prostitutes and beggars.
So we can see above that families within shengyuan and higher degree holders were privileged classes.
According to the chart Social Composition of Juren and Gongsheng, 1840 -1910, Category A ( no degree holder in last three generations) only averagely composes 20%, while Category B and C composes 80% in total. It is obvious that people from the privileged-class family had a higher possibility to enter or stay in the upper class than people from other classes. This is as similar as that presented in French school table. Plus, the professor doesn’t give us more details regarding middle classes and lower classes, namely that we don’t know how many peoplefrom lower-class or middle-class families , through the civil service exam, entered the upper classes. It is possible that lower-class people had the same rate of social mobility as that shown in French school case.
So personally, that comparison between China and West might not be that exact.
Thank you very much to tell me so much. And I found that I was thinking in Chinese habit. Please forgive me. I think I should study more about western culture before compare these two kind of culture. And I haven't thought about college education and law, well, in my world, the law system, college education and the exam system for chose officer is totally three different things with no connection.
Is there a particular reason why you skip the "tribute students" in your examination hierarchy? Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the book you mentioned in your lecture. Thank you.
Many thanks. You are very kind to include the quote. Although my understanding, particularly of the language, remains somewhat cloudy, the insight you provide here is helpful.
thanks a lot to all of you for your kind comments. putting it down in words has helped me too in viewing it with a different perspective and comparitive view.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23376561
Very useful, Phyllis. Thanks
Evidently success in China can be equated to success in passing competitive cognitive exams and for the last 500 years this success has been achieved by many people of simple backgrounds. The inference is that opportunity in China has been open to all who strive for it. The fact is that in a rigorous bureaucratic system of government, a test system is one excellent way of controlling the distribution of wealth and power. It is designed to keep the controlling government stable and in power.
The comparison of the Chinese competitive test system to success in the West is neither reasonable nor fair. In the US where I live and was born, there is no evidence that the government is trying to perpetuate itself. The government belongs to the people. We have had several Presidents from humble backgrounds. It was not academic success that won them their position, but rather the ability to attract the votes of the people. In a democracy it takes more than cognitive ability to be politically successful. Moreover, success cannot be equated to just bureaucratic success. There are many roads to wealth and success and our government does not control them all. Our Constitution guarantees us the right to seek happiness as we may.
<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:'Table Normal'; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:''; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} <![endif]-->Thanks. I agree completely. To make conclusions about social mobility based on evidence on whether previous generations were officials requires all sort of caveats. I have also wondered about comparing data about China with France some centuries later merits further discussion. Thanks for your comments
If i see to the paragraphs at min 6 of lecture 3, i think that wealth is not forgotten:
meritocracy concern an half, wealth the second half, and together ensures much more social mobility than hereditary noble system.
'Half of late imperial Chinese officials were chosen by an objective test of their ability as opposed to their birth. I'll bet for those families privileged enough to provide at lest their sons an examination-level education. In late Imperial China such families comprises as many as ten percent of all people.
And moreover since the alternative ladder of success was through purchase, social prestige and political authority were as much the real of the wealthy as the capable rather than the noble.
So, rather than one percent, at least say ten percent of the entire population. Ten times more people who could rise to the top.'
Agree to your opinions! Further to the above, the population of China increased rapidly from 142 million by 1741 to 432 million in 1851. Most peasants were subject to heavy rents and taxation, especially at the end of the 18th century. Population growth intensified the land shortage problem in Qing Dynasty. Some very poor peasants in those days had to sell all their possessions and even children during bad harvest time. In order to survive/get rid of extreme poverty/growing hardship in some rural areas, its the parents' dreams (or even the dream of whole village) to have their son(s) / villager(s) to pass the exam and become Shengyuan/Juren/Jinshi. Some candidates had to borrow money from others (relatives/friends/villages) so as to seat for the exam in the capital. For some candidates who failed, they might retake once, twice or more ....
Influenced by the traditional chinese values and attitudes, Chinese still believe that education is one main factor to achieve social mobility (still in some Hong Kong parents' mind too).
PS (1) the Qing dynasty reached the height of their power under the rule of Kangxi and Qianlong. However, after a long period of peace and prosperity, China faced lots of challenges. (2) Though the movies based on the background of Qing Dynasty may not reveal the truth, you can watch some and understand a little bit more about the civil service exam, the lives between the gentry/noble class and peasants .... if possible. In some movies, the points that Cara said could be found in some scenes.
~ just my two cents
So far there has seemed to be no reference to any regional variations in what one might refer to as upward mobility. I noticed the records include place of origin. Were there different rates of success with some areas doing much better over time than others? And if so what might have been the cause, perhaps growth in some yielding enough excess income to enable more youth to study rather than work, more books to be bought, etc.)
(Bringing this to mind is the release in the last few days of a study showing significant differences between US cities in this regard, published at http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/)
1.they can become superstars at that time. You see, TangYin ,DuFu and so on are ancient Chinese superstars. 2.If their literature skill were not great enough to become stars, they can become teachers. 3.If someone was too stupid to be a teacher, well, only farmer or a merchant they could become.
If they had got a degree but haven't became an offer, he would be respected by common people and would get supply from his hometown.
Although the course does not "emphasize the temporal narratives of late imperial, early modern and contemporary China", it would be useful to know what is seen to characterize the "modern" in China or at least what time period is considered "early modern". In other societies, the early modern is extremely interesting because one sees the origins of the world we live in now, having sometimes surprising roots. Is "early modern" only after "late imperial"? It seems things were already changing in the Qing, well before the period of intensive Western influence/interference.
Anonymous, I also can't imagine people seriously thinking contemporary China is not modern (despite, I am sure, having like most (all?) other countries a way still to go and some regions and social groups much less modern than others). And I seriously doubt China is looking for an identity, having such a long history and such a rich culture. Can you point to some specific authors who have implied or stated this? I would like to read why.
My sense is it was before the greatest Western influence, that something did happen in the "era that transcended the Ming-Qing divide" as Rowe put it (thank you Henry for those pages from his Introduction, which I'd skimmed too fast in my haste to read its first couple of chapters). Money, literacy and management seem, as Rowe says, part of it, but China had such an earlier start with printing, the examination system, rational administration (e.g. grain stockpiles), what made this period the beginning of something special?
In the West, the modern era has been seen, I think, as associated with the emergence of banking, printing, and (by Weber) the Protestant Reformation.
I have run cross an interesting CCTV documentary "History of Modern Chinese Banking"
that may be interesting, in light of this.
The first parts describe how Shanxi province became the financial center of China during the Ming and Qing, with the emergence of the first private banks, in particular the Rishengtang exchange in Pingyao. This began before the first Opium War, so this development was apparently not a Western introduction but of Chinese origin. Though there was it seems an indirect linkage of sorts with monetary interaction with the West, as Chinese imported much silver from Latin America obtained in exchange for Chinese goods. (I cannot help but note yet another parallel with contemporary China, which gets many raw materials from the same area).
I have not yet watched all parts, however I see that in a later one it is to show that "In 1892, Qu [Benqiao] was a sucessful candidate in the highest imperial civil service examination and started his official career. He was the first sucessful candidate in all the Shanxi merchant family in 100 years."
James, you make a very good point and one that is worthy of more consideration. Unfortunately I'm not well enough versed in Sino or Western history to add to this discussion, but I would like to read any future comments about this topic.
Your original point is an interesting one. In addition to the channels for upward mobility you mention, patronage by the powerful was another: I think of Peter the Great and the many commoners from other countries he brought into Russia for their military/shipbuilding/technical etc. expertise, some of whom he raised to high positions in Russian society. And there are many other examples of such powerful patrons in western history over the last few hundred years, not just monarchs but also among the elite. This was particularly the case with artists and musicians, whom you also refer to.
Perhaps the focus of the course is a bit narrow, if its conclusions about social mobility are drawn exclusively from comparisons with the imperial examination system. But I find the information to date fascinating - never having read Ho Ping-ti's work - and will wait and see if in future weeks the definition of social mobility in the west becomes more nuanced. At this point, I have to say that I don't have enough information to judge whether social mobility was greater in China or in the West in this period. I'm open to being persuaded either way.
I don't think I have any disagreements with the comments of James and others here, but I want to turn the discussion a bit:
I wonder whether our professor presented enough evidence to make his case. His Case, as I think I heard it, was that late Imperial China was characterized by greater social mobility than the West in comparable centuries. Some of you above have written about how we should define and measure social mobility, but I'm saying that even if we take our professor's terms as he defines them, did he present evidence that proves His Case, or did the evidence show that China was relatively immobile.
I think it was the latter because this is what I thought I heard: Did he say that only the top 10% of the society, as measured by achieved literacy, which correlates with the wealth needed to engage tutors for the examination system, could ever aspire to the Shengyuan - Juren - Jinshi ladder? He called that top 10% 'examination-level educated adult males' in Lecture 1.3, 2:56. Then, I know he showed a relatively high degree of mobility within that top tier, but it's only 10%, with the other 90% being mostly rural peasantry generation after generation. Actually, it's only 5% : 95%, given the exclusion of women.
Or did he prove that the 10% tier was widely open to the aspirational members of the lower 90% of men? I don't think so. I think he emphasized that the lower or less-successful-for-the-previous-three-generations within the top 10% had a reasonable chance of reaching the top 1% Shengyuan or top 0.1% Juren or top 0.01% Jinshi. Those outside the top 10% had zero chance, as far as I understand it.
Contrast that with the West, where even if we ignore the issues of whether we should measure social mobility only by entrance to the civil service, we have evidence at odds with our professor's conclusions, it seems to me. In Lecture 1.4 he presented data around 11:20 showing that the top 11.3% of French society filled 55.7% or 43.9% of the spots at Les Grandes Ecoles. And around 11:53 he shows the top 9% of French society filled 65% of spots at L’Ecole Nationale d’Administration. But I ask you, doesn’t this reflect more social mobility than in China, where 10% filled 100% of the spots in the civil service?
Did our professor present evidence that showed greater European social mobility while characterizing it as showing greater Chinese social mobility? Wang Zuo Fa, above, has already concluded that the West had greater mobility, but here I think I've shown it using our professors own definitions and data. What do you think?
Briefly, I find a few assertions encountered in the course to be questionable.
The comparison with Western society in particular strikes me as misguided. Here's an example of a questionable statement: 'In the West, most elites, especially political elites, were from hereditary nobles representing at most 1% of all people'. First of all, Western society is very diverse across geography and time, but if we take France around 1600 then we will find that a very great proportion of government offices were in the stream of commerce, the sale of administrative posts being a primary mean of government finance. So much so that the French state officialised the practice by creating the Bureau des parties casuelles, as the administrative unit tasked with selling royal posts. Who bought government offices? Men of money, i.e. men that weren't nobles to begin with but had found success in commerce and, hence, were more likely to have experienced social mobility.
I would also strongly question the assertion that France in 1600 was governed by hereditary nobles in light of the fact that the so-called 'nobility' was far from a closed class. Viz. the practice of sale of honours (e.g. titles of nobility) which was also popular as a means of government finance. Who bought honours? Again, men of money. So who is really a noble to begin with? Hence the statement that 'in the West, most elites, especially political elites, were from hereditary nobles...' is both false and misguided. While it may be true that 'hereditary nobles' represented at most 1% of the total population, this is no significant measure of social mobility.
Now, on to the data re: Chinese examination system. Here's what I gathered:
1. only approximately 50% of offices are assigned through examination, the rest is bought. Bought by who? This is an important question and it is given no answer.
2. In the Qing period:
a) of the examinees that pass Juren and Gongsheng examination, only 20% have no ancestors that ever held official positions;
b) only 20% of successful Jingshi examinees have no prior ancestral degree holders.
Overall, that represents 20% of 55,000 out of a 50 million total male population, meaning that 0.02% of the total male population successfully completes one of the superior level examinations. That's not a lot and, in fact, it strikes me as very little. Compare that with the nearly 40% of graduates from the Ecole Normale Superieure who, in the period 1868-1941, come from the middle class.
3. I see no independent demonstration of the assertion that examinees with no prior scholar ancestors are a reliable approximation of lower social status. Since all of the argument concerning social mobility is based exactly around this assumption, I have some difficulty accepting the conclusions. I note in passing that if it is true that success in the examination system is purely a function of ability, rather than wealth (and social origin), then examination data can only be taken as a measure of ability, rather than wealth (and social origin).
I do not believe the basic civil service test is used in the federal government anymore but certainly tests are used for many types of jobs depending on location. In the past the federal test served as an entre to many entry-level jobs at several grade levels up to a certain level. Once in the federal civil service, though, tests are not used for promotion.
In NYC as mentioned on another thread, a test is used for the police dept. entry and for each promotional level through captain (unlike most other police departments) and the fire dept., among others. Over the years the results have been litigated based, for example, on what was perceived as prejudicial questions and/or results. Anon. below speaks to similar issues.
I'm not sure testing itself is the entire evil it is painted. In the past (and now), New York State gave year-end Regents tests in many subjects. They were not impossible but were required for a "Regents diploma." Recently, the New York Times printed samples of what are now taken to be passing, or better, answers on certain Regents. They would not have been accepted years ago. The testing of today may not be effective in improving performance but the failure of students on tests may at least partially reflect a real decline in performance and learning. In other words, the tests at least in part could well be valid. Attacking the tests because they give us bad news begs the question--which is what us really going on with the US educational system?
Alfred, are you saying that Bennett took the wrong approach and unjustifiably vilified other cultures and promoted a narrow education based only on Western points of view? If so, I agree. If not and you agree with him, I would have to beg to differ. Americans should certainly know and understand their own history but we also need to celebrate our diversity and learn about other countries and cultures not from an ethnocentric, superior perspective but from a real hunger to know.
I enjoyed the second week lectures. There is so much complexities. I wasn't sure what was the source of the occupational data for parents. For example, some people may have their 户口 residential record as farmer but they are migrant worker in the city. Also, some may have one parent as cadre and another one as factory worker, which category does he or she belong to?
Thanks for your response, my question was more about whether these occupations are current occupations or their hukou occupations, which I assume would depend on the wording of the questions in the form these students filled out.
Quotations from Mao Tse Tung
In order to guarantee that our Party and country do not change their color, we must not only have a correct line and correct policies but must train and bring up millions of successors who will carry on the cause of proletarian revolution. In the final analysis, the question of training successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat is one of whether or not there will be people who can carry on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary cause started by the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not the leadership of our Party and state will remain in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not our descendants will continue to march along the correct road laid down by Marxism-Leninism, or, in other words, whether or not we can successfully prevent the emergence of Khrushchov's revisionism in China. In short, it is an extremely important question, a matter of life and death for our Party and our country. It is a question of fundamental importance to the proletarian revolutionary cause for a hundred, a thousand, nay ten thousand years. Basing themselves on the changes in the Soviet Union, the imperialist prophets are pinning their hopes of 'peaceful evolution' on the third or fourth generation of the Chinese Party. We must shatter these imperialist prophecies. From our highest organizations down to the grass-roots, we must everywhere give constant attention to the training and upbringing of successors to the revolutionary cause. What are the requirements for worthy successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat? They must be genuine Marxist-Leninists and not revisionists like Khrushchev wearing the cloak of Marxism-Leninism. They must be revolutionaries who wholeheartedly serve the overwhelming majority of the people of China and the whole world, and must not be like Khrushchev who serves both the interests of the handful of members of the privileged bourgeois stratum in his own country and those of foreign imperialism and reaction. They must be proletarian statesmen capable of uniting and working together with the overwhelming majority. Not only must they unite with those who agree with them, they must also be good at uniting with those who disagree and even with those who formerly opposed them and have since been proved wrong in practice. But they must especially watch out for careerists and conspirators like Khrushchev and prevent such bad elements from usurping the leadership of the Party and the state at any level. They must be models in applying the Party's democratic centralism, must master the method of leadership based on the principle of 'from the masses, to the masses', and must cultivate a democratic style and be good at listening to the masses. They must not be despotic like Khrushchev and violate the Party's democratic centralism, make surprise attacks on comrades or act arbitrarily and dictatorially. They must be modest and prudent and guard against arrogance and impetuosity; they must be imbued with the spirit of self-criticism and have the courage to correct mistakes and shortcomings in their work. They must never cover up their errors like Khrushchev, and claim all the credit for themselves and shift all the blame on others. Successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat come forward in mass struggles and are tempered in the great storms of revolution. It is essential to test and judge cadres and choose and train successors in the long course of mass struggle.
Quoted in On Khrushchov's Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World (July 14,1964), pp. 72-74.*
Our Party organizations must be extended all over the country and we must purposefully train tens of thousands of cadres and hundreds of first-rate mass leaders. They must be cadres and leaders versed in Marxism-Leninism, politically far-sighted, competent in work, full of the spirit of self-sacrifice, capable of tackling problems on their own, steadfast in the midst of difficulties and loyal and devoted in serving the nation, the class and the Party. It is on these cadres and leaders that the Party relies for its links with the membership and the masses, and it is by relying on their firm leadership of the masses that the Party can succeed in defeating the enemy. Such cadres and leaders must be free from selfishness, from individualistic heroism, ostentation, sloth, passivity, and arrogant sectarianism, and they must be selfless national and class heroes; such are the qualities and the style of work demanded of the members, cadres and leaders of our Party.
'Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front' (May 7, 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 291.*
Cadres are a decisive factor, once the political line is determined. Therefore, it is our fighting task to train large numbers of new cadres in a planned way.
'The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War' (October 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 202.
The criterion the Communist Party should apply in its cadres policy is whether or not a cadre is resolute in carrying out the Party line, keeps to Party discipline, has close ties with the masses, has the ability to find his bearings independently, and is active, hardworking and unselfish. This is what 'appointing people on their merit' means.
Ibid.
It is necessary to maintain the system of cadre participation in collective productive labour. The cadres of our Party and state are ordinary workers and not overlords sitting on the backs of the people. By taking part in collective productive labour, the cadres maintain extensive, constant and close ties with the working people. This is a major measure of fundamental importance for a socialist system; it helps to overcome bureaucracy and to prevent revisionism and dogmatism.
Quoted in On Khrushchov's Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World (July 14, 1964), pp. 68-69.*
We must know how to judge cadres. We must not confine our judgement to a short period or a single incident in a cadre's life, but should consider his life and work as a whole. This is the principal method of judging cadres.
'The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War' (October 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 202.
We must, know how to use cadres well. In the final analysis, leadership involves two main responsibilities: to work out ideas, and to use cadres well. Such things as drawing up plans, making decisions, and giving orders and directives, are all in the category of 'working out ideas'. To put the ideas into practice, we must weld the cadres together and encourage them to go into action; this comes into the category of 'using the cadres well'.
Ibid.
We must know how to take good care of cadres. There are several ways of doing so. First, give them guidance. This means allowing them a free hand in their work so that they have the courage to assume responsibility and, at the same time, giving them timely instructions so that, guided by the Party's political line, they are able to make full use of their initiative. Second, raise their level. This means educating them by giving them the opportunity to study so that they can enhance their theoretical understanding and their working ability. Third, check up on their work, and help them sum up their experience, carry forward their achievements and correct their mistakes. To assign work without checking up and to take notice only when serious mistakes are made - that is not the way to take care of cadres. Fourth, in general, use the method of persuasion with cadres who have made mistakes, and help them correct their mistakes. The method of struggle should be confined to those who make serious mistakes and nevertheless refuse to accept guidance. Here patience is essential. It is wrong lightly to label people 'opportunists' or lightly to begin 'waging struggles' against them. Fifth, help them with their difficulties. When cadres are in difficulty as a result of illness, straitened means or domestic or other troubles, we must be sure to give them as much care as possible.This is how to take good care of cadres.
Ibid., p. 203.
A leading group that is genuinely united and is linked with the masses can gradually be formed only in the process of mass struggle, and not in isolation from it. In the process of a great struggle, the composition of the leading group in most cases should not and cannot remain entirely unchanged throughout the initial, middle and final stages; the activists who come forward in the course of the struggle must constantly be promoted to replace those original members of the leading group who are inferior by comparison or who have degenerated.
'Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership' (June 1, 1943), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 118.*
If our Party does not have a great many new cadres working in unity and cooperation with the old cadres, our cause will come to a stop. All old cadres, therefore, should welcome the new ones with the utmost enthusiasm and show them the warmest solicitude. True, new cadres have their shortcomings. They have not been long in the revolution and lack experience, and unavoidably some have brought with them vestiges of the unwholesome ideology of the old society, remnants of the ideology of petty-bourgeois individualism. But such shortcomings can be gradually eliminated through education and tempering in the revolution. The strong point of the new cadres, as Stalin has said, is that they are acutely sensitive to what is new and are therefore enthusiastic and active to a high degree - the very qualities which some of the old cadres lack. Cadres, new and old, should respect each other, learn from each other and overcome their own shortcomings by learning from each other's strong points, so as to unite as one in the common cause and guard against sectarian tendencies.
'Rectify the Party's Style of Work' (February 1, 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 47.
Our concern should extend to non-Party cadres as well as to Party cadres. There are many capable people outside the Party whom we must not ignore. The duty of every Communist is to rid himself of aloofness and arrogance and to work well with non-Party cadres, give them sincere help, have a warm, comradely attitude towards them and enlist their initiative in the great cause of resisting Japan and reconstructing the nation.
'The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War' (October 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 202.
In the second week's lectures, two Chinese universities, Beijing and Tsinghua, were I believe mentioned as "elite". These presumably draw national student bodies in addition to being the most selective. Are there other "elite" universities especially outside the capital? Also are some universities in China in any way specialized or focused toward specific areas such science and engineering or teaching or agricultural science?
This shows the ranking of the top 500 universities in the world. It includes the best in China and Hong Kong.
For anyone interested, I have found there is a video in English about entrance examinations and key schools that is online at
http://english.cntv.cn/program/program/chinainsight/20130727/100878.shtml
Education Policies in Comparative Perspective: Suggestions for a research agenda, Jacques Hallak (UNESCO, IIEP Contributions No. 6, 1990)
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0009/000904/090473eo.pdf
Foreign Influence on Japanese and Chinese Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis, Qiang Zha, 2004
http://hep.oise.utoronto.ca/index.php/hep/article/view/572/650
Education and the Asian Surge, A Comparison of the Education Systems in India and China, Charles A Goldman, Krishna Kumar, Ying Liu (Center for Asia and Pacific Policy, Rand, 2008)
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2008/RAND_OP218.pdf
Higher Education Systems: A Comparative Study Between China and UK (2009)
http://en.oboulo.com/higher-educational-systems-a-comparative-study-between-china-and-uk-64659.html
Comparative Education: A Case Study of Chinese and Danish Systems, Fang Yang, March 2011
Students’ Expectations of and motivations for studying comparative analysis: Across Nine Countries
Although I do not see the lecture as critcizing any country, regarding financing in China, it is worth pointing out, I think, that the lectures do not discuss the impact of the houkou registation system on denying educational opportunities for migrant workers, a big chunk of working people. They must either pay out of pocket for their children to go to school or send them back to their home area.
See for example http://www.pri.org/stories/politics-society/social-justice/china-s-hukou-system-puts-migrant-workers-at-severe-economic-disadvantage-13676.html
What I would like to ask is: to which extent is the US system of higher education actually representative for the West? Isn't it possible that US is an extreme case within the West?
If you compare the class composition of students enrolled in higher education in OECD countries on average, how would these numbers compare to the numbers from China and the US?
7% | 5% | 6% | 12.2% |
16% | 9% | 18% | 4.8% |
43% | 42% | 42% | 63.7% |
8% | 5% | 6% | 16.4% |
0.1% | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
10% | 27% | 14% | N/A |
In the last six years, Harvard's student population ranged between 19,000 and 21,000, across all programs. Harvard enrolled 6,655 students in undergraduate programs, 3,738 students in graduate programs, and 10,722 students in professional programs.[122] The undergraduate population is 51% female, the graduate population is 48% female, and the professional population is 49% female.[122]
Undergraduate admission to Harvard is characterized by the Carnegie Foundation as 'more selective, lower transfer-in'.[59]Harvard College received 27,462 applications for admission to the Class of 2013, 2,175 were admitted (7.9%), and 1,658 enrolled (76.2%).[124] 95% of first-year students graduated in the top tenth of their high school class.[124] Harvard also enrolled 266 National Merit Scholars, the most in the nation.[125] 88% of students graduate within 4 years and 98% graduate within 6 years.[126]
Harvard College accepted 5.8% of applicants for the class of 2017, a record low for the school's entire history.[127] The number of acceptances has gone down since the university announced a large increase in financial aid in 2008.[citation needed] Harvard College ended its early admissions program in 2007 as the program was believed to disadvantage low-income and under-represented minority applicants applying to selective universities.[128] For the Class of 2016 an Early Action program was reintroduced.
The undergraduate admissions office's preference for children of alumni policies have been the subject of scrutiny and debate as it primarily aids whites and the wealthy and seems to conflict with the concept of meritocratic admissions.[129][130]
---You have to be very critical to find a lot of fault with this. The racial quotas are kept open to ensure diversity, and even so the asian students are way ahead of their quota because they have done well in high school. There is a huge international student body.
---The high school I taught at had several scholarships offered by Harvard. Most of the recipients were from immigrant families--from India, China, VietNam, and some arab countries. They were indeed the best students in the school and were both active in student activities and enrolled in Advanced Placement courses. It could be argued that the families had moved to the U.S. in the first place to get their kids into good schools. One of my own ESL students was given a full scholarship to Harvard--he arrived in the U.S. with no parents and no English, just a lot of study, determination, excellent references, (and skills on the football field). My immigrant families were always saying that school in the U.S, was too easy and the American students too lazy--their own kids had to work harder, and they did.
---It could also be argued that not everyone aspires to go to Harvard. It is the place to go if you need a network of rich friends, which would be politics and business. That is why the alumnae want their kids to go there too, to keep it all in the family. I know at least two presidents of Mexico are Harvard Business grads. Harvard grads are the creme of the creme, and so are their friends. I don't know if you can buy your way into Harvard, can you?
---We have a lot of good schools in the U.S. that cater to different interests and skills. Many of them are not 'elite' and some are considered elite for the students studying that particular field, such as SCAD as an art school that doesn't even have difficult entrance requirements.
---A huge factor affecting university attendance in the U.S. is cost. Universities have increased their rates tremendously in the last few years. There has been easy money for loans, and that is a whole other problem. For many, the best choice is to go to school near home rather than move away for a few years.
----Note that we do not even have a farmer/worker category any more. Our farm and factory worker population is very low here in the U.S. There are less and less jobs available for people with no training. I guess our 'cadre' would be the business elite.
Mary,
What I was trying to address was"elite" and what is happening to kids in less/very advantaged backgrounds, overall. The latter is not good and wages are extremely depressed in lower-paying service jobs.
But, you are definitely right. Upward mobility is not dead. It can mean being a cop ir firefighter or in skilled trades? am a first generation college grad. My nephew, whose mom (my sister) did not go to college, did go to a top law school. My husband got a grad degree at a good school--he also is the son of a non-college grad. He and I did end up with decent--not top-notch--jobs. But, we do not have the contacts/networks "elite" families have. Where my son will land, I do not know. The economy is bad. But, money is not everything, either. Many people in positions that do a lot of good are very underpaid. Elites do not end up in human service jobs, generally, though, and certainly not in jobs at the low end.
It is a complex picture.
The disparity between rich and poor is getting wider, but not for lack of access to education or universities. There are 123,291[1] libraries in the US. How many wii, Nintendo’s, X-box’s gaming consoles are there? If, the students were spending as much time reading or doing, instead of spending hours and on games….what would the difference be? More innovation, imagination.. Less obesity, and more ambition?
In week two, we turn to education and social mobility in contemporary China focusing on the second half of the twentieth century. This project is in collaboration with Liang Chen former postdoc from our group, who is now an associate professor of history at Nanjing University. So Week 2 is about what we call a silent revolution, student diversity at two of China's elite universities - Peking University is a national University and SuzHou University, which is a provincial level university.
The question we asked was the one which absorbs an enormous number of Chinese parents, as well as Chinese students, is, given that life is unfair and that you're dealing with some people whose race to the top is propelled by limousines, and other people who have to pull carts, to what extent are the poor cart pullers at least empowered by the fact that they have a university education?
You see the laureate cap on the head of the poor man pulling the cart. and to what extent, of course, does that university credential help make up for the fact and that they're not riding the limousine and have to compete against the guy who actually looks a little bit like me, you know, the sort of overweight person, wearing suspenders, who likes sweet food. and so that's the question which we are addressing in in this week's talk.
So, fundamentally, it comes down to, in this first part, which is about who gets what. We're talking about who gets what in terms of education and income. So, the first comparative question we'd like to start off with is, we'd like to ask you to ask yourself, in say the United States, which is the most open and democratic developed country we know of, in elite American universities, what proportion of students cover the top 1%, 5%, and 20% of households, and what percent of students are in these elite universities, the Harvard’s, the Yale’s, the Princeton’s, the MIT’s, the Caltech’s? What percent come from the bottom half of the income distribution?
The answers are surprising. This comes from the 2008-09 freshman class survey done of 1,400 American universities, and it distinguishes between very high private universities, the light green, high public universities, the light blue, and high private universities, the red line, and the general distribution of annual income in the United States, the black line.
What you can see is that the top 20% of households get 70% to 80% of all the student slots in the very high private universities. The top 5% of households get 40% of student slots - and the bottom half, which in the United States would be houses that make less than high $40,000 a year - the bottom half get something like 18%, 20%, and 25% at best, while the bottom quarter probably only gets 6% to 7% of student slots. So the top 5% get the top 40%, in the top elite American universities. So, hardly that equal.
So, what about China, especially as China is becoming increasingly unequal in terms of income? Moving from a Gini coefficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient) near that of Sweden, in the high 20s, to a Gini coefficient more unequal in the United States, somewhere in the high 40s, mid-high 40s, this graph shows the rise in the Gini coefficient of income (no period) nationally over time in the quarter or 30 years from 1978 to 2006. And you can see, we roughly show it increase from somewhere around Sweden to somewhere past the United States in inequality.
So given that China is becoming increasingly unequal in income, do we see the same inequality sort of corrupting and becoming more pervasive in terms of Hong Kong? This is especially interesting because the number of elite universities in China has hardly increased in terms of the number of student places.
While university admissions, for Chinese students, has increased from roughly 2.0% to almost 20%, the number of elite universities hasn't really increased at all. And yet, at the same time, the number of Chinese who are eligible to go to university, the green line - the number of people who graduate from senior high school - has increased from about 6% to over 70% during the last half of the 20th century.
So given that the population at risk, the eligible population to go to university, having increased by a factor of ten, given that inequality has more than doubled from a Gini coefficient of mid-20s to mid to high 40s. What has happened to elite university education in China and for that matter in Hong Kong? To what extent do we find these inequalities to be perhaps even worse than the United States or the same as the United States?
Again, when we look at the numbers, the results are surprising. In Hong Kong, it turns out that in the same year that we saw such vast inequalities in high private, very high private American universities, it turns out that half of all university students, in the universities in Hong Kong, actually come from the bottom half of the income pool, half, 50%, not 6 or 7% as the United States.
Though, we see, here is the results of a freshman survey run in all eight Hong Kong universities, in the same freshman class, 2008 to 2009, with in order: Hong Kong Baptist University. Hong Kong University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, the aquamarine line, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, my university, Polytechnic University, Lingnan University, Hong Kong University of Higher Education, City University, and then you have the bold purple line, which is the distribution of monthly household income in Hong Kong, in 2008 and 2009.
So, what you see is that, first of all, the three so-called research universities in Hong Kong - Hong Kong University, which is over 100 years old, Chinese University of Hong Kong, which is over 60 years old, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. You can see that the profile of their incoming students is roughly the same as the other five Hong Kong public universities. In fact, the shape of all student distributions for all eight universities is roughly the same.
Hong Kong University has slightly more students coming from households that make more than 50,000 Hong Kong dollars a month, which would be the top 5-10% of households in Hong Kong. At the same time, they take in 20%, 30%, and 50% of their students from households making 19,000 or less Hong Kong a month. That is roughly around the median, or less, since the median household income in 2008-2009 was 17,500.
So, in contrast to the United States, which is a much more open society, but where university admissions is distinctly closed to people from lower income groups, in Hong Kong, we find that, in spite of conditions that are very similar to those in China at large, we find that even at the best universities, the majority of student places go to people making either the bottom half, the bottom two-thirds, the bottom three-quarters of the income distribution, which is almost the exact inverse of what we had in the United States.
Now, Hong Kong achieves such high proportions of diversity, because most elite families send their children overseas for university education. So in other words, we're not looking at a closed population. In Mainland China, however, although most universities, most students go to university domestically, the proportion of students who come from families with no tertiary education turns out to be equal or even greater than Hong Kong. And this is as true as the elite national universities, such as Beijing University, and provincial universities, such as University, based on what we shall see in the following lecture.
Thank you both Mary and David for your illuminating criticisms of the course. It does seem a bit preachy and I am reminded by the two of you that, "there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" ~Twain
A better comparison would be with the University of California schools, including Berkeley and UCLA, where the percent of Pell Recipiants (ie low income) is 40%. This is similar to Hong Kong.
or Finland where 80% of young women go to university now http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11438140
or the district of Westminster in London where 52% of low income young people go to university... http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/low-income-families-half-as-likely-to-see-children-reach-university/420836.article
I agree on this answer. BTW, in French "Beijing" is written as "Pékin", this city's Pinyin spelling is not very popular outside of mainland China.
So to answer this question in the second part of this talk, we look at student diversity at two specific universities. Peking University, as I said, one of the best national universities from 1950 to 1999, and Suzhou University, one of the best provincial level universities, from 1950 to 2003. These would be the years of the entering freshmen class, so the 2003 class graduated in 2007.
For this part of the lecture, we are looking at the results of a group project involving number of my colleagues at Hong Kong university of Science and Technology, as well as other universities, especially in this case, who used to be a Post Doctoral fellow and is now an assistant professor, soon to be an associate professor of History at Nanjing University.
And we have also, our colleagues for the Peking University, University Archives and the SZU University. University Archives, who are kind enough to make the student registration cards of the entering freshman classes available to us for data entry and data analysis.
Now the Peking University student registration cards - we have about 65,000 of them entered into computer comprising our first big data sort of study for this lecture this week, and as you'll see, the data actually only come from three or four periods, 1952 to 1955, 1972 to 1987, and 1989 to 1999. We're missing data for a number of years. 1949 to 1951, 1956 to 1965, and 1970 to 1971, and then usually, and this is worth noting given China's recent national history, we're missing also the student cards for the freshman class of 1988. Their data was removed from campus in University.
So what we'll be reporting on today is a summary of 65,000 undergraduate student registration cards for the years which we do have data on from Peking University and from 86,000 student registration cards from Suzhou University. For Suzhou University, the data are more complete.
As for Suzhou University, in terms of where it stands, in terms of the distribution of high school graduates, about ten per 100 high school graduates in Jiangsu Province qualify for entry to Suzhou University. In contrast, for Peking University, nationally it's about one per 1,000 high school graduates that are nationally qualified for entry into Peking University, and about one per hundred in Peking City.
Now the data which we're going to be accessing consists of a common kind of student registration card mandated by the Chinese Ministry of Education, and it includes only some 20 variables: Student ID, Name, Department, and Major. For today's class, we'll be looking at only a few of these. We'll be looking at Sex. We'll be looking at Year. We'll be looking at Major Social Relations and Occupations of parents. We'll be looking at detailed postal address and we'll be looking at prior schooling, only five of the 20 variables, because these five at least give us information on the gender of students, the provincial and geographic origin, their parental occupation, and their prior schooling.
So 4 of the 8 sources of student diversity - the other 4 we ignore in today's talk. Ethnicity, family income, parental education and urban rule. because of lack of time, or in the case of income and education, because lack of information on the student registration card.
Now the first thing to note is that the Peking University and Suzhou University data are not evenly spread throughout China in terms of their origins. Peking University actually has a mandated quota by province, or by provincial level city, whereas you'll see for the most favored city, which is Peking of course, 147 students for every 10,000 high school graduates go to Peking University. That's at the high end, whereas, in say Xinjiang province or Guangdong Province, surprisingly enough, only three out of every 10,000 high school graduates get to go to Peking University.
So, provincial level quotas are inherently very unequal, favor the more well off cities, and favor the well off provincial seaboard populations of Xieling, Liaoning province, Chuciang province, Fujien province, and Hainan. Similarly, while there is no set of quotas for Suzhou University, Suzhou University draws over 95% of its students entirely from Jiangsu province. Even though they don't have an internal quota system, you can see that overwhelmingly, most of the students are local, from Suzhou itself, which is the very dark shaded area on the map. If not from Suzhou itself, then from Southern Jiangsu Province, as opposed to Northern Jiangsu Province, which is the much lighter color on the map.
Now, we first of all we look at this data, and we look at the first variable in this pseudo registration card gender. We see that actually there has been a remarkable change, in terms of the diversity of students, with many more female students, especially in the 80's and the 90's. Such that in Suzhou University, which is the green line, about one male student for every female students, whereas before, in 1949, there were two male students for every female students in a kind of fluctuating or up and down up until 1979, and then a steady sort of equalization of the male female sex ratio.
What you see is then Peking University, which are the red dots. You had a distribution that was originally even more unequal - over four male students for every female student - declining more or less monotonically starting in 1979, such that now it's about 1.3 to 1.4 males for every female student. And what you can also see, from the blue line, is that these declining proportions of inequality, by gender, more or less are mapped nationally, they equate nationally, with the gender ratio of universe as a whole, for China as a whole.
In other words, one of the most stubborn dimensions of inequality, that persisted for millennia, between the sexes in China, especially in the last two decades of the 20th century, suddenly became more and more equal. And so that's one example, one very straightforward consistent example, of diversity. With occupation, it's much more complex.
Now in this graph, what we're looking at is the parental occupation of PKU university parents. In this case it's both parents - the mother and the father, if they're employed. In other words, the numbers actually map out to perhaps over 100%, because if you have two parents, then for every student, it could be 200%. And what we've done is we've taken some 8,000 occupations, that are reported by the students filling out the card, and we've grouped them into one, two, three, four, five, six large categories.
The first one, the blue dot, is administrator and the party leadership or commercial enterprise leadership children. The second one, the maroon sort of a diamond, is the children of professionals, engineers, doctors, professors. The next, a very kind of consistent blue green line, is the children of office workers, and then equally consistent is the children of a sort of retail shopkeepers.
Then we have two lines, administrative children or professional children, which are very up and down; we have the blue squares, which are the children of farmers, or fisherman, or shepherds, and the orange circles, which are the children of factory workers.
Now what we see here is that the children of farmers, which during the cultural revolution, was as high, at one point, as 50% of the students, had at least one parent who was a farmer, has declined to something like 15% now. At the same time, we see that the children of factory workers, which was about 13% to 14% in the mid 1980s, has increased significantly to well over 20%.
In the late 1990s, an increase of about 70% to 80%, but that this increase is dwarfed by the increase in the children of administrators, whether they are state enterprises, party organization or commercial enterprises. And then you have the children of course professionals who do the best. Possibly these are professors kids who learn how to test at their mothers breast and therefore do especially well.
Now we have lot of variation in contrast to the very monotonic, consistent of the sort of increasingly diverse student body by gender. Here we have a picture, which is much more mixed, on the one hand increasing inequality, with the rise of elite children and the decline of farming children, and at the same time, though, a significant increase in factory kids. Mirroring perhaps, also, the rise in factory workers in general, in China, of course, with China's phenomenal economic growth starting in the late seventies, early eighties.
In Suzhou University, we see something which is roughly similar. We see that the children of administrators, which was originally well below 10% in the 1950s, has become around 30% by the late 20th century, early 21st century. The children of professionals is also high, 30% though it has declined steadily since the 1989. and we can, see that in Suzhou University, unlike Peking University, the children of farmers has stayed roughly consistent at about 25% for the last quarter century. And the children of factory workers has actually doubled from 10% in 1989 to 20%, in 2003.
So in orders, if you take farmers' children and factory workers' children and add them together, you get about 50%. So half the children in China come from sort of elite families, half the children in China come from working class families, and those elite families tend to be the student Cadre families, tend to be not party official children, but the children of commercial enterprises.
So here what we've done is we've taken the children of the Chinese, called Cadres Campbell, and the proportion here is shown by the vertical histogram. And we've then divided them into one, two, three, four main categories. One is the blue line, which is Political Cadres and State Administrators. Then you have the red line, which is Entrepreneurial Cadres and the state administrators. The green line which is other Cadres, and then the purple line which is unidentifiable Cadres where we're not sure how to how to assign them, whether they were a commercial or state enterprise or other.
And what you can see here is that starting from the early 1970s, there's a gradual decline in the proportion of Cadre children who come from party and political Cadre families. And that's dwarfed, however, by a very steady increase, from almost zero to forty percent of all Cadres coming from commercial enterprises. So, in other words, this phenomenal increase in the number of Cadre children, at least in Suzhou University, is not from a exercise of political power by party secretaries or by university presidents, but rather is a display of the ability of the new Chinese entrepreneurs, the new commercial class (Entrepreneurial Cadres) that's leading China's economic growth, and their ability to place their children into at least an elite provincial university such as Suzhou University.
We don't unfortunately know the results for Peking University, because we were not able to do that analysis for Peking University. So what that means is that if we were to take the students and look at the distribution of parents by employment, and we were to compare that to the distribution of employment in Jiangsu Province overall, we would see that children of Cadres placed something like 10 times - they bat 10 times out of their weight class. So for ever single Cadre, there is about 10 Cadre kids that are going to Suzhou University.
At the same time, for factory workers, it's almost roughly equal. For very worker, there is 0.8 - almost one student for every factory worker. The only occupation that is highly disadvantaged is the farmer, where the ratio is two to one - it takes two farmers to send one student to Suzhou University.
In Peking University, the proportions are roughly the same, except they're more extreme. Peking University takes five farmers to send one student to Peking University. So, in other words, it's much harder for farming families to send kids to a one per 1,000 university, as opposed to a ten per 100 university.
Cadres is almost 20 times their weight class in the population overall. Factory workers surprisingly it's more than one. So for every factory worker you'll find somewhere between 1.1 and 1.4 students going to Peking University.
Now, if we were to interact this with geography, what we see is that the distribution actually is quite revealing, because we can see is that if we look at the students from Cadre families by province, and we compare that to the distribution of Cadres by province, we see that far more Cadre families are likely to have their children test into Peking University.
In the less-developed frontier provinces of Hainan, Guangsi, Guizhou, Yunnan, and surprisingly Sechuan, and where you have the very dark-shaded areas as compared to the lightest-shaded areas which are Beijing. So in Beijing, being a Cadre, you only get to bat seven times your weight, whereas if you're a Cadre in Yunan or Hinan, you would be batting at 25, 30 or 40 times your weight, as opposed to seven times your weight.
While the contrast with farmers is almost exactly the opposite. For farmers who get their kids into Peking University remember, nationally it takes almost five farmers to get one kid into Peking University. But along the very rich provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, you see that it's almost 0.7 - that's all instead of being .2, it's almost 1. Whereas in very remote areas, such as Yunnan and Guizhou, it can be as low as point 0.07, as opposed to 0.2.
So in other words farm families in the rich sea board provinces are 10 times more likely to be able to get their children into Peking University, then farm families from remote provinces. Probably reflecting both the different cultural capital and the education of the families, and more important, as we will see in the moment, their access to good schools, because there are far more good rural primary schools, junior high schools, even senior high schools in Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, than there are in Yunnan and Guizhou.
Yes, a timely article for those taking this course. It also pointed out that, although now only 30 percent of women get their names on the title for the home, more are trying to do so, or at least to document their contribution to payments, because both members of most couples are contributing.
-- jikou shoutian: Qin-Han
-- zhantian: Western Jin
-- tuntian: Three Kingdoms
-- juntian: Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang
-- fubing: Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang
-- weisuo: Ming
Thanks in advance.
(Anonymous Gleb)
Yes. I believe many people at the 40% level had more debt than their net worth. This is not surprising at all in U.S.
You actually may not have wealth--depending on how he defines it. It seems to rely to a huge extent on home ownership which can overstate wealth in China but understate it elsewhere with more of a history if rental even by the middle classes.
This week’s lectures is really comparing apples and oranges
We compared land ownership in a single area inhabited primarily by new migrants versus wealth in entire nations.
Nothing much one should take from this comparison
The vast majority of research seems to indicate China has traditionally had a pretty unequal distribution of wealth (except in the early days of Communist rule when the vast majority of the people were all near starvation); although in general the income inequality in China probably was not significantly higher than in most of societies at different points in time.
Nothing in the data presented would indicate the vast majority of research on income inequality in China in the past and present got it completely wrong and in fact Chinese has been generally a much fairer society than all the rest.
From personal experience, research and observations, current income inequality is as big or bigger problem in China than it is in the West, and it is one of the biggest problems faced in the West today.
The conclusions presented don’t really match the data presented and are contradicted by the vast majority of research on the topic.
The professor seems to have an agenda in which to promote, but I am not sure what it is. If he was followed the party line, he would be expected to play up the inequality in the past before “liberation” more.
China has a fascinating history and surely it is in no need of being sugarcoated when presented to be respected and found interesting.
An agenda much in keeping with the first two weeks of the course...
Well I think the same as you do, for my experience there is a big difference, they have a lot of millionaires, millions but they are a lot of Chinese.
Saying that a poor Chinese house owner "at least" is better than those bottom 40% US "Have Not" is such a ridiculous conclusion. Perhaps the Chinese can go home and can starve to death with something over his head and so full of dignity whereas the poor American has no dignity at all and has to line up for government benefits to save his life.
I am fascinated with and have studied a considerable amount of Asian history and have lived in China and will be heading back soon. I have also spent most of my adult life in Asia.
I like China, and the people, and culture. I surely am not an expert on China and my understanding of the Chinese language is very limited (but I am still working on it :).
But I am not sure the comparisons the instructors have made between China and the West are very accurate or helpful. On the other hand, it is silly to try to turn this course into an “us good, them bad' debate.
The professors do seem to be promoting the idea that China was in the past and is in the present far more egalitarian than it has been portrayed by almost every historian or social scientist (both Chinese and Western) previously (for example, China is considered to have a fairly higher power distance score according to the work of Geert Hofstede).
I am not insinuating that China is either “good” or “bad’ or “better” or “worse” than any other culture or country, I always try to teach students to acknowledge differences without feeling a need to be judgmental about the differences. (Ice cream is very different from pizza but is not really better or worse).
But to make the case the existing understanding of the hierarchical nature of Chinese culture (past and present) is fundamentally wrong will require more convincing evidence than what has been presented so far.
In the west most of the household is very dynamic which is young couple living with their young kids. Not like in China or Asia as a whole two or three generations living together. So the research done on this subject is like comparing "banana" to "cucumber". It gives us some ideas but not accurate conclusion.
I agree the data comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. A few qualifying comments about such comparison are needed in the lecture. I hope the research to produce these data is only the first step, more work is needed to understand historical and contemporary Chinese and Western society. With all said, I found Professor Lee's comment about the ancient and modern Chinese philosophy of wealth distribution and transfer very interesting.
My biggest question is what is the total wealth distribution of today's China compared to U.S. or U.K, not just home-ownership. With all the recent reports about huge wealth cumulated by Chinese political/commercial elites, i guess, the comparison may look quite similar, or becoming more similar. The sad truth is that such data about China may never be available because wealth ownership is all hidden by the privileged.
While this is a course on history, current income inequality in China is well known and is discussed openly in the country and by academics and journalists within the country. After looking at the official statistics on GDP per-capita, poverty levels and so on and after living and traveling through the country it would appear to me the statistics are not completely inaccurate (like the 10% GDP growth reported in Myanmar each year). But let us remember that many experts in the field believe rising income inequality may be a necessary condition to create the economic growth needed for poverty reduction and although China has seen growing inequality the leadership of country should also be given credit in leading the country through the fastest and largest poverty reduction program the world has ever seen.
Here is a short piece on inequality for a book on poverty reduction that came out earlier this year
While economic growth has brought improved standards of living and reductions in poverty, it has also significantly increased income inequality. There is significant inequality related to geography with coastal regions doing much better than inland regions, and there is also a growing divide between rural and urban incomes (Aroca, et al.; Wan, et al., 2010). China’s Gini coefficient shows China has far more inequality than most developed economies and many developing economies and ‘China is being transformed from an egalitarian society to a highly unequal one’ (Wang, 2008: 18).
One group who has helped drive China’s growth but has not shared equally in the benefits of the growth is the vast army of migrant workers mostly coming to the cities from the rural regions. These migrants mostly work in low-paid, labor-intensive and often dangerous jobs with little security and no formal protection. These workers are also very vulnerable to even mild slowdowns in economic growth (Wu, et al., 2010: 20; Zhang and Lin, 2010)
While rural poverty appears to have been lessening up until the 1990s, that trend appears to have stopped and might have even reversed with increases in poverty in the rural areas as migrants flock to the cities in search of improved lives; there has also been a slowing in the reduction of urban poverty (Zhang and Wan, 2008). While most attention on poverty in China is on rural areas and plight of migrant workers, Wu et al., (2010) reminded the public that there is also significant poverty within urban China mostly caused by dislocations of low skilled older workers as many state-owned businesses have privatized or have had to become more competitive and therefore have shed inefficient workers.
The average income in Shanghai is well over 10 times as much as in the western province of Guizhou, and the gap has grown considerably since reforms began, and is around 8 times as high as in the other western provinces of Gansu, Guangxi and Yunnan (Aroca, et al., 2008: 125; Lin and Liu, 2008: 56). The China Daily Newspaper (2012) reported per capita annual income in rural areas average 6,977 Yuan compared to 21,810 Yuan for individuals living in urban areas.
As regional income inequalities continue to rise, regional inequalities in other areas are also seen. Most foreign investment continue to pour into costal area while little FDI has been moving inland (Tsui, 2008: 97). Although average levels of educational inequality are declining slightly, students from the less prosperous provinces are at a distinct disadvantage to students from the more prosperous coastal regions. Not only are students in the inland and western regions less likely to have access to quality instructions and educational facilities, they are also forced to score higher on entrance exams than are students from more prosperous regions for placement in universities (Lee, 2008). Eastern China dominates scientific and technological innovation within the country (Fan and Wan, 2008) which would likely give an advantage to firms who are closer to centers of innovation as they would be more likely to be able to benefit from the spill-over effects. In addition, the development of financial institutions has been faster in the coastal areas and ‘regions with higher level of financial development tend to enjoy faster economic growth’ (Liang, 2008: 120).
From Hipsher, S. (2013). Private Sector’s Role in Poverty Reduction in Asia, Oxford: Chandos Publishing Limited.
References
Aroca, P., Guo, D. and Hewings, G. (2008) Spatial Convergence in China: 1952-99 China in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 125-143.
China Daily (2012) Give workers their due, China Daily February 13, 2012 edition, p. 8.
Fan, P. and Wan, G. (2008) China’s regional inequality in innovation: 1995-2004 in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 144-162.
Lee, M. P. (2008) Widening gap of educational opportunity? A study of the changing patterns of educational attainment in China in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 163-183.
Liang, Z. (2008) Financial development, growth and regional disparity in post-reform China in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 112-124.
Lin, J. and Liu, P. (2008) Development strategies and regional income disparities in China in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 56-78.
Tsui, K. (2008) Forces shaping China’ interprovincial inequality in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 79-111.
Wan, G., Lu, M. and Chen, Z. (2010) The inequality-growth nexus in the short and long run: Empirical evidence from China in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY. 1-17.
Wang, X. (2008) Income inequality in China and its influencing factors in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 18-32.
Wu, F., Webster, C., He, S. and Liu Y. (2010) Urban Poverty in China. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited: Cheltenham UK.
Zhang, X. and Lin, S. (2010) The impact of the global slowdown on the People’s Republic of China’s rural migrants: Empirical evidence from a 12 city survey in Bauer, A, and Thant M (Ed). Poverty and sustainability development in Asia: Impacts and responses to the global economic crisis, Asian Development Bank, Mandaluyong City. P 203-218.
Zhang, Y. and Wan, G. (2008) Poverty reduction in China: Trends and causes in Guanghua Wan edited, Inequality and Growth in Modern China, Oxford University Press, NY, 33-55.
Thanks for this insightful comment.
1) Wealth distribution, as presented, does not provide enough information for comparison. It is important to understand what the purchasing power is within the local and global economic markets.
2) The whole redistribution of housing also skews the comparison, since China followed the Soviet model of housing distribution during privatization when the houses were basically given to the families who were living there under the previous system. This privatization artificially created the situation where the majority of the population now owns their home. Again, the same phenomenon happened in Russia, and China followed this model. Thus, such statistics gives a very biased view.
3) The fact that more people own 2 or more properties in China is also taken out of context. In China (like in Russia) real estate is the safest and most desirable investment to make, unlike in the West with well established financial institutions that make investing in other asset classes more desireable and accessable to the population.
It appears that the professor chooses statistics to support his arguments without providing full context.
Mary your post is full of common places and stereotypes. it is just scary. You could have added Kung fu and Chinese triad, and it would make a great Hollywood movie. Everyone who knows anything about China knows about the concept of extended family, meaning 'uncle' and 'aunt' relations are not based on blood relations. It also refers to elder members of the extended family or elder people in general when addressed by younger people.
@ Anonymous Please try this link. It should not be paywalled. [http://english.caijing.com.cn/2013-07-24/113083580.html] This is an interesting article on this topic with data by Li Huafang, Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institute of Finance & Law in Caixin Online called "Why China should dream of Building Better Institutions.
If there is a problem with this link, I will post a shortened version of the article relevant to this discussion.
Dear anonymous, Thanks for the correction. The people told me that thy came from the Hongkong region. It still puzzles me, where these hard working people get the money from to start their businesses. I can hardly believe that it is all their own money.
I totally agree with you Karen. I have just been reading part of a survey by the Institute of Social Sciences at PKU. 90% of all Chinese either own or partly own their homes and 10% own 2 or more properties. (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/Business/real-estate/9-in-10-families-own-their-homes/shdaily.shtml) As to the USA in the North East and parts of the West mean property values are around $ 270,000 but for much of the country they are nearer to $ 160,000. I wonder how much of this is due to the disparity between income levels of Caucasians compared to Hispanics and Afro-Carribeans. (http://www.realestateabc.com/outlook/overall.htm)
@ anonymous What areas were "not shown to visitors"? Intrigued by your comment.
When the Urban Banners and Rural Banners were being migrated to Shuangcheng they were supposed to cultivate the land distributed to that family by their own. If they had strong young men they could do better than families without man power. Rural Banners were allocated less land because of their farming skill they could produce more products from less land.
There were no machine at that time and no labourers to hire. There was limit to how many land one person could cultivate. Owning more land in those area was not an appropriate factor to evaluate the wealth of those people.
History has proved that how the people managed their land is the most important factor to determine productivity and the subsequent accumulation of wealth. Not even one country implementing communism can be classified as a wealthy nation.
Comparatively speaking, it would be interesting to incorporate knowledge of research conducted in the field of land grant era (mid- to late 19th Century) migration westward in the USA with Imperial efforts to "settle" SC in China during roughly the same time period.
Were any of these Bannermen, Metropolitan or Rural, newly arrived immigrants to the capital city? Or of a different ethnic or political background than the contemporary ruling elite? Thank you.
I agree.
Housing is not the entirety of wealth, personal property is also important. And so is especially savings, quite high in China (see e.g. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.ZS/countries?display=map) and its level a "puzzle" prompting academic discussion. E.g. in http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-038.pdf, where Xin Wang and Yi Wen conclude it is not due to housing prices but rather "that large uninsurable risks (or idiosyncratic uncertainty in household income and spending needs) and borrowing constraints may provide the answer to China’s high household saving rate."
So what are these comparative international data perhaps really saying?
Good comments. It would be more meaningful to compare the total wealth distribution of China today vs. the distribution of U.S. or U.K. With all recent reports of the huge wealth cummulation by political and commercial elites, the distribution may be very similar. The hard part is to obtain the total wealth distribution of China, where the political or commercial elites hide their wealth well.
However, that very bad house (which your parent's paid off at your marriage) in a remote village is one of the levels of Mallow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you are in the USA , you have to struggle with the mental angst until you are in your 50s , before you pay off the 30-year fixed mortgage. A person my find the boat inequitable but is afraid to rock the boat for fear to fall out of the boat and what ever small assurances of comfort are lost.
When I lost my job, I moved into my beach house.
Perhaps ironically, the transition in the US in the 20th century has been from a'purer' form of capitalism to one that has added taxation in many forms to provide social support for the lower cohorts that do not possess personal wealth. The effect has been that while perhaps a smaller percentage of US workers own real estate, they receive either public housing or rent support payments in a variety of ways. An imperfect system to be sure, but one that make the interpretation of data in Section 3 of questionable value. Renting property does make a tenant more subject to housing disruption but a social safety net is available to many, at least for now.
Also, it would be interesting to know how viable an option it actually is for a newly urban Chinese to return to the rural property that they own. Having a rural apartment is a very different thing from having rural agricultural land. One can starve in an apartment in the country as easily as in the city and the popular understanding g of the migration to urban locales in China in the US press is that it was driven by an absence of economic opportunity I. The rural areas.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Although China is ruled by a “communist party,” real Marxism (it seems to me from my experience) has much less support in China than it does in the West, after all the Chinese have lived through the horrors of the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution and years of poverty induced by misguided economic policies.
The current “Communist” government gives lip service to Marxist ideology once every five years at the big meeting, but everyone within the communist party itself knows communism is dead and no one seems interested in its restoration. In fact, most people today join the Communist Party to gain connections one can use to increase wealth for oneself instead of hoping to achieve some type of egalitarian utopia.
With Communist ideology completed discredited, the Communist party needs to seek other sources of legitimacy for justification of its continued political monopoly of power.
The first source of legitimacy is its success. The thinking goes, as long as the economy continues to grow (the magical 8% target) the government will be accepted as legitimate.
And regardless of one’s political orientation one has to admire the success in growing the economy, reducing poverty and improving basic standards of living for hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens since the reforms within the ruling Communist Party
Another source of legitimacy which the government is promoting is as the inheritor and preserver of a glorious past and presiding over the reemergence of a powerful nation. We see a similar situation in my neck of the woods where the Communist Party in Laos today uses its support of Buddhism and traditional Lao culture as a foundation for legitimacy (Despite its initial claims to break the country free of its Buddhist past).
Imposing Marxist ideology seems to have had a major impact on Chinese values and traditions, but Marxism did not replace traditional Chinese traditions and values. Therefore, current perceptions of the glories of imperial China would seem to impact both official and unofficial thinking and practices. In a thousand years’ time will Communist rule in China be thought of as a breaking point from China’s past or part of the evolution of Chinese society and culture? My guess is it will probably be seen as more as a piece of the evolution of Chinese society than a complete break with the past.
A 'Communist' government presiding over a market economy may not make sense to those of us Westerners, but within China it appears to considered legitimate.
And yet another thought. While studying history can sometimes be useful in directly understanding modern societies, also the knowledge is valuable in itself. Gaining a better understanding of the past in itself is a valuable justification for pursuit of knowledge, and while this knowledge may not help us directly understand any specific issue of today, it can indirectly help us better understand the human experience.
Just my two Satang on the topic J.
Where is the Beijing government in relationship to Buddhist philosophy/religion (depending how you look at it)? Other Asian traditions? Western religious groups? There seems to be a push and pull. Expand tolerance a bit then contract if things get too far along (large congregations). Or a national Catholic Church with regime-appointed bishops but a push and pull with Rome on autonomy. There might have to be a philosophy to replace communism for some, or at least some religious practice to emerge from the underground. I'd like to hear from fellow Chinese students here. I visited Shanghai and there are state-sanctioned Catholic Churches readily available for worship-had I wanted to attend the church of my childhood. How does this work?
Though my English is not good enough to express my point of view,I am interested in this topic and I tried to express my confusion on this lecture.PLease forgive my sentences if they were not polite or with gramma mistakes.
I felt confused on the issue of homeownership in China.
According to the house distribution policy in China, the graph of homeownership by income can't reflect the connection of homeownership and income.PRofessor said no matter where the house is these poor people do own houses. So I think this depends on the various cost Of houses in different places. But It doesn't have much connection With their income.Especially when we think of the land distribution policy. We do have policy for peasant to Own houses. And the national company Also have policy to let their workers own houses at Much less cost than To buy a commercial one.So people didn't get them only with their income but by policy. So I think the ownership of commercial houses can reflect the connection of homeownership and income.
Now the important role which made the homeownership changed. The government generally retreat from the market, and people can't get house by policy nor with their income.(for example, workers, low income, used to own their houses by policy, now can't afford a house with their income)And people who in the graph already had their houses before the policy change. So the graph may chage greatly in 10 or 15 years. The phenomena reflected by the graph is not steady even in a short term.It only reflect homeownership in China in the past before the policy changed.
Likewise, the graph of homeownership by age reflects the situation of people who are over 35. Some Of them may miss the housing policy,but fortunately they bought houses before the price became ridiculous(compare with the income).
So today's young man in China are not optimistic than young man in America.They may suffer more on the issue of housing. Becaue They are under the throe of transformation. And no one can tell how long it will be nor where they will live.
Scott, Which works did you have in mind? Are you referring to studies about the USA or China. In the case of the latter, it is only recently China has allowed academic open discussion and there have/are only been a few studies accessible/available to those who live outside China.
I am not a Chinese expert nor am I a historian and I don’t read Chinese (more than a few hundred characters anyway)
So I am sure there are others who could give you a better list than I can.
But here are a few pieces I have read which are related to the topics we have addressed here.
As far as income equality since the revolution, I highly recommend the book Inequality and Growth in Modern China (2008), G. Wan (Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
There are more books on Chinese History (in English) than one could ever read. A few I felt were worth the effort and are based on solid academic research include.
Crossley, P.K. (2010) The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800, Chichester, UK: Wiley–Blackwell.
Fairbanks, J.K., Reischauer, E.O. and Craig, A.M. (1989) East Asia: Traditions and Transformation, Revised Edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hucker, C.O. (1975) China’s Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fenby, J. (2008) Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present, New York: Ecco (HarperCollins).
Kuhn, R.K. (2010) How China’s Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China’s Reform and What This Means for the Future, Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia).
Wakeman, F. (1975) The Fall of Imperial China, New York: Free Press.
Some good research articles on issues related to what we have studied include:
Li, W. and Yang, D.T. (2005) ‘The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a central planning disaster,’ Journal of Political Economy, 113(4): 840–77.
Deng, K.G. (2003) ‘State transformation, reforms and economic performance in China, 1840–1910,’ in A. Teichiva and H. Matis (Eds.), Nation, State and the Economy in History, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 308–31.
Friedman, E. (1994) ‘Reconstructing China’s national identity: A southern alternative to Mao-era anti-imperialistic nationalism,’ Journal of Asian Studies, 53(1): 67–91.
Ma, D. (2011) ‘The role of traditional Chinese state and the origin of modern East Asia,’ in K. Otsuka and K. Kalirajan (Eds.), Community, Market and State in Development, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 64–79.
A few articles which are more economic in orientation but also research on income inequality in more recent times include:
Lin, J.F., Zhuang, J., Tang, M. and Lin, T. (2008) ‘Inclusive growth toward a harmonious society in the People’s Republic of China: An overview,’ Asian Development Review, 25(1): 1–14.
Lin, J.Y. and Liu, P. (2008) ‘Achieving equity and efficiency simultaneously in the primary distribution stage in the People’s Republic of China,’ Asian Development Review, 25(1): 34–57.
Zhuang, J. (2008) ‘Inclusive growth toward a harmonious society in the People’s Republic of China: Policy implications,’ Asian Development Review, 25(1/2): 22–33.
The theoretical foundation for the analysis used by the professor seemed to be limited to works from the 1970s and before (works studied when the professor was a student?) by authors with quite leftist leaning. these works were prodcued before communism as a political and economic system was completely discredited and before Marxist academic approaches fell out of favor (except in a few social science academic departments that chose to ignore empirical evidence and the real world :)).
Many thanks for the detailed list, Scott. Most useful.
I’d like to share an excellent book I just completed that discusses many of the themes discussed in this course. The book is entitled Wealth and Power, China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century by Orville Schell and John Delury.
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/161758/wealth-and-power-by-orville-schell-and-john-delury
To see a video where Orville Schell discusses this new work head to:
http://asiasociety.org/southern-california/video-and-photos-orville-schell-wealth-and-power-china
Thanks to Prof Lee and Associates for an interesting course. Looking forward to Prof Lee's new book, 'Silent Revolution: Social Origins of Peking and Suzhou University Students, 1949-2002' .
I found some additional resources that focus on wealth and income trends in the contemporary period that may be of interest.
Inequality in China: An Overview by John Knight. Policy Research Working Paper #6482, The World Bank, June 2013
http://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/6482.html
Inequality in China: Recent Trends by Terry Sicular, University of Western Ontario
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/6930/China_inequality_Sicular.pdf
Trends in the distribution of Income in China by Li Shi and Hiroshi SATO, Sept 13, 2012
http://ahec2012.org/papers/S2B-1_Li_Sato.pdf
Thanks for the references, Kathleen. I endorse your comments about Professor Lee and his colleagues.
I found the data in week 4 the most compelling of all the data presented.
However, the research presented in this course is of an extremely narrow type and while the results help to give more clarity to some specific aspects of Chinese history the results of the research need to be placed and judged by the place it holds in the vast amount of academic research done on Chinese history.
I think it would be foolhardy to extrapolate too much from the limited data studied here to the entire history of China.
This course (in my opinion) has value to professional historians or those already with a solid background on which one can add this information to a existing store of knowledge to get a slightly clearer picture of some specific aspects of Chinese history.
However for those with a casual interest and without a solid background of study in Chinese history and culture, one should be very careful about trying to assume the information presented here tells the whole story of Chinese society throughout these 300 years looked at.
One question which has been going through my mind for the last few days is how did Liu Shaoqi come to the view that the landlords and rich peasants who made up less than 10% of the population owned 70-80% of the land when the statistical evidence does not support this. Were his arguments based on a hunch or gut feeling? Was there an area in China which he knew well where this was the case and then he drew the conclusion that this was the same throughout China? Did he know this was wrong but used this argument nonetheless to support the case the case socio-political change?
Question to Coursera staff/instructor: Quiz 4 question 2 (video 4.4: Revolutionary Victims in Shuangcheng and Elsewhere, segment 02:30 to 03:57).
Quiz 4 Q2: The question is “In Shuangcheng County, among three major types of crimes (economic, political, personal/social), economic exploitation alone accounted for _____ of the crimes associated with revolutionary targets.
Regarding to the figures on slide 4, the economic category for crimes is 4,493 of a total of 10,240 (43,89%, round down to 40%). On next page (slide 5), referring to the details of the economic category for crimes, the exploitation amount is 4,132 of the above total of 4,493 (40,35%, round down to 40%). So I understood the total is around 40 percents. May I ask you to explain how/where you get 50%?
Many thanks.
I agree with anonymous. According to the data presented economic crimes were 43.89% and according to my transcript of the lecture, Professor Lee said "economic crimes were less than half - only 4,500".
In lecture 4.4 Slide 3 on Who were the Victims? The total N/A should be 1419 not 1407 as on the slide. The total figure of 8672 in the bottom right hand column is correct.