Plurk paste

Notes
1. OBSESSION 1. Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018); Yingyi Qian, “A Theory of Shortage in Socialist Economies Based on the ‘Soft Budget Constraint,’” American Economic Review 84, no. 1 (1994): 145–156.
2. Jingzi Wu, Gladys Yang, and Xianyi Yang, The Scholars (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2004).
3. The exam system, known as Keju, was in its nascent stage in Sui-Tang dynasties and got expanded around 1000 AD in the Song dynasty. For more information, see Peter Kees Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in Tʾang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
4. Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Chung-li Chang,, The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society, with intro. by Franz Michael, (1955; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).
5. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China.
6. Ying Bai and Ruixue Jia, “Elite Recruitment and Political Stability: The Impact of the Abolition of China’s Civil Service Exam,” Econometrica 84, no. 2 (2016): 677–733, https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA13448.
7. The Republic had a “five-power” constitution, adding two Chinese institutions—the recently scrapped examination system and the censorate—to the legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
The examination system was later institutionalized as the “Examination Branch” in the Republic of China and can still be seen in Taiwan today.
8. Hongbin Li, Mark Rosenzweig, and Junsen Zhang, “Altruism, Favoritism, and Guilt in the Allocation of Family Resources: Sophie’s Choice in Mao’s Mass Send-Down Movement,” Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 1 (2010): 1–38, https://doi.org/10.1086/650315.
9. Andrew G. Walder, China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
10. To understand how the Cultural Revolution changed the lives of many young people in China, see Xueguang Zhou and Liren Hou, “Children of the Cultural Revolution: The State and the Life Course in the People’s Republic of China,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 1 (1999): 12–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/000312249906400103.
11. Hongbin Li and Lingsheng Meng, “The Scarring Effects of College Education Deprivation During China’s Cultural Revolution,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 70, no. 3 (2022): 981–1016, https://doi.org/10.1086/713935.
12. Jacob Mincer, Schooling, Experience, and Earnings (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1974). 13. Morley Gunderson and Philip Oreopoulos, “Returns to Education in Developed Countries,” in The Economics of Education, 2nd ed., ed. Steve Bradley and Colin Green (Elsevier, 2020), 39–51, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815391-8.00003-3.
14. Xin Meng and Michael P. Kidd, “Labor Market Reform and the Changing Structure of Wage Determination in China’s State Sector During the 1980s,” Journal of Comparative Economics 25, no.
3 (1997): 403–421, https://doi.org/10.1006/jcec.1997.1481; Raymond P.
Byron and Evelyn Q.
Manaloto, “Returns to Education in China,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 38, no. 4 (1990): 783–796, https://doi.org/10.1086/451833.
15. Hongbin Li, James Liang, and Binzhen Wu, “Labor Market Experience and Returns to College Education in Fast Growing Economies,” Journal of Human Resources, June 10, 2022, 0421- 11629R2, doi: https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.0421-11629R2; Junsen Zhang et al., “Economic Returns to Schooling in Urban China, 1988 to 2001,” Journal of Comparative Economics 33, no. 4 (2005): 730– 752, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2005.05.008.
16. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “School Enrollment, Tertiary (% Gross)—China, United States,” World Bank Group, accessed April 24, 2024, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR?locations=CN-US.
17. Dezhuang Hu et al., “The Burden of Education Costs in China: A Struggle for All, but Heavier for Lower-Income Families,” manuscript, August 31, 2023, available at SSRN, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4558282.
18. One explanation would be that parents in more unequal countries invest more in their children’s education. Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, Love, Money & Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
19. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PISA 2015 Results, vol. 2, Policies and Practices for Successful Schools (Paris: OECD, 2016).
20. Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (New York: Penguin, 2011).
21. There are ninety-six national first-tier colleges in college admission, which also overlaps with the Project-211 (meaning Top 100 in the twenty-first century) college.
22. Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li, “Just Above the Exam Cutoff Score: Elite College Admission and Wages in China,” Journal of Public Economics 196 (April 2021): 104371, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104371.
23. Sharon LaFraniere, “China’s College Entry Test Is an Obsession,” New York Times, June 12, 2009; Eva Dou, “In Flooded China Town, Students Cling to Tractors to Get to College Entrance Exam,” Washington Post, July 8, 2020; Chao Deng, “China’s Cutthroat School System Leads to Teen Suicides,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2014; Yvette Tan, “Gaokao Season: China Embarks on Dreaded National Exams,” BBC, June 7, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china36457453; Ben Westcott and Nectar Gan, “10 Million Students in China Are Facing the Toughest Exam of Their Lives in a Pandemic,” CNN, April 10, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/asia/coronavirus-china-gaokao-student -intl-hnk/index.html.
24. How Do Chinese Study for Exams? Day in The Life of a Chinese High School Student, Youtube, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NNXInTVmo.
25. Ministry of Education, “1949–2013: Compilation of Statistical Data for Sixty-Five Years of New China [ 65 ],” n.d.
26. National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical Yearbook: 2022, https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/ndsj/2022/indexeh.htm.
2. RULES OF THE TOURNAMENT 1. The hukou system is also a historical legacy of the Qin dynasty (221 BC–207 BC), the first unified and centralized Chinese dynasty. The policy was known as (registered households and equal/common people). , , 1990 [Du Zhengsheng, “Educating Households and Enabling the People: The Formation of Traditional Political and Social Structure”].
2. “2023 Admission Rates of 985 and 211 Universities in Provinces Across the Country [2023 985 211 ],” August 24, 2023, https://www.pagetu.com/2023/08/14/11/819/.
3. Ruixue Jia and Torsten Persson, “Choosing Ethnicity: The Inter-play Between Individual and Social Motives,” Journal of the European Economic Association 19, no. 2 (2021): 1203–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvaa026.
4. , ., and , The China Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform [ : ], Zeng ding ban, di 1 ban (Shanghai: : : , 2012).
5. Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell, Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
6. Hongbin Li and Binzhen Wu, “China’s Educational Inequality: Facts from College Entrance Exams and Admissions,” manuscript, 2023.
7. Hongbin Li et al., “Unequal Access to College in China: How Far Have Poor, Rural Students Been Left Behind?,” China Quarterly 221 (March 2015): 185–207, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741015000314.
8. Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, and Lingsheng Meng, “Elite College Education and Social Mobility in China,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, March 18, 2024, 730493, https://doi.org/10.1086/730493.
9. Dezhuang Hu et al., “The Burden of Education Costs in China: A Struggle for All, but Heavier for Lower-Income Families,” manuscript, August 31, 2023, available at SSRN, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4558282.
10. Hu et al., “The Burden of Education Costs in China.” 11. Jia, Li, and Meng, “Elite College Education and Social Mobility in China.” 12. Ye Jin, Hongbin Li, and Binzhen Wu, “Income Inequality, Consumption, and Social-Status Seeking,” Journal of Comparative Economics 39, no. 2 (2011): 191–204, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2010.12.004.
13. Jia, Li, and Meng, “Elite College Education and Social Mobility in China.” 14. Hu et al., “The Burden of Education Costs in China.” 15. Jia, Li, and Meng, “Elite College Education and Social Mobility in China”; Raj Chetty et al., “Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 135, no.
3 (2020): 1567–1633, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa005. 3. THE PAYOFF 1. Gary S. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
2. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PISA 2018 Results, vol. 1, What Students Know and Can Do (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2019). PISA 2022 results were released in December 2023.
However, due to COVID-19 restrictions, data from China’s provinces—Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang—were not fully collected and thus not published.
3. Prashant Loyalka et al., “Skill Levels and Gains in University STEM Education in China, India, Russia and the United States,” Nature Human Behaviour 5, no. 7 (2021): 892–904, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562–021–01062–3.
4. Hongbin Li et al., “What Can Students Gain from China’s Higher Education?” Asian Economic Policy Review 18, no. 2 (2023): 287–304, https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12426. 5. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PISA 2015 Results, vol. 2, Policies and Practices for Successful Schools (Paris: OECD, 2016).
6. Michael Spence, “Job Market Signaling,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 87, no. 3 (1973): 354–374, 355, https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010.
7. Eric Fish, “Are China’s Colleges Too Easy? Universities Lament Low Dropout Rate,” World Crunch, April 9, 2013, https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/are-china039s-colleges-too-easy universities-lament-low-dropout-rate.
8. Hongbin Li, Pak Wai Liu, and Junsen Zhang, “Estimating Returns to Education Using Twins in Urban China,” Journal of Development Economics 97, no. 2 (2012): 494–504, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.05.009.
9. Jere R. Behrman, Mark R. Rosenzweig, and Paul Taubman, “Endowments and the Allocation of Schooling in the Family and in the Marriage Market: The Twins Experiment,” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 6 (1994): 1131–74, https://doi.org/10.1086/261966.
10. Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li, “Just above the Exam Cutoff Score: Elite College Admission and Wages in China,” Journal of Public Economics 196 (April 2021): 104371, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104371. 11. Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger, “Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data,” Journal of Human Resources 49, no. 2 (2014): 328– 358, https://doi.org/10.1353/jhr.2014.0015.
4. POLITICAL LOGIC 1. Javier Hernandez, “China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict,” New York Times, June 11, 2016.
2. [Housing in the Top School District in Beijing’s Xicheng District Was Abolished, and Parents Stayed Up All Night to Defend Their Rights! The SoCalled School District Housing Is a Pig-Killing Tray Carefully Designed by the Government. The Harvest Time Has Come American Roadside Society], n.d., https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Ve9dtA6Zmlc&t=373s; 50 [Beijing’s New Deal Cancels School District Housing, and Xicheng District School District Housing Drops by 500,000 per Day], n.d., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKn7yRlVKmM.
3. Education and social mobility are long-standing issues in the social sciences. Influential works include Pierre Bourdieu’s work on education and culture capital. Pierre Bourdieu, State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, trans. Lauretta C. Clough (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
4. Christian Houle, “Social Mobility and Political Instability,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63, no. 1 (2019): 85–111, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717723434.
5. Even at its nascent stage around 650 AD, the system had already increased social mobility.
Fangqi Wen, Erik H. Wang, and Michael Hout, “Social Mobility in the Tang Dynasty as the Imperial Examination Rose and Aristocratic Family Pedigree Declined, 618–907 CE,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 4 (2024): e2305564121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305564121. More research has been published for the Ming and Qing dynasties, which generally shows that many of the officials came from nonaristocratic families. E. A.
Kracke, Jr., “Family vs. Merit in Chinese Civil Service Examinations Under the Empire,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 10, no. 2 (1947): 103–123; Qin Jiang and James Kai-sing Kung, “Social Mobility in Late Imperial China: Reconsidering the ‘Ladder of Success’ Hypothesis,” Modern China 47, no. 5 (2021): 628–661, https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700420914529; Ping-Ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368–1911 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). Jia Ruixue and James Kung, “The Culture and Institutions of Confucianism,” in Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior, ed. Benjamin Enke, Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn, and Leonard Wantchekon (forthcoming).
6. Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014).
7. For a comprehensive discussion on this point, see Yasheng Huang, The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023).
8. Ruixue Jia, Gérard Roland, and Yang Xie, “A Theory of Power Structure and Institutional Compatibility: China versus Europe Revisited,” Journal of the European Economic Association 22, no. 3 (2024): 1275–1318, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvad050.
9. Huang and Yang also find that the civil service exam effectively constrained aristocratic power and contributed to the decline in intra-elite conflicts in imperial China. Yasheng Huang and Clair Yang, “A Longevity Mechanism of Chinese Absolutism,” Journal of Politics 84, no. 2 (2022): 1165– 75, https://doi.org/10.1086/714934.
10. , ., China labour statistical yearbook 2022, Di 1 ban (Beijing: , 2022).
11. Hongbin Li et al., “Job Preferences and Outcomes for China’s College Graduates,” China Quarterly 258 (June 2024): 529–547, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741023001510.
12. Davide Cantoni et al., “Curriculum and Ideology,” Journal of Political Economy 125, no. 2 (2017): 338–392, https://doi.org/10.1086/690951.
13. Hongbin Li, Sai Luo, and Yang Wang, “Curriculum, Political Participation, and Career Choice,” manuscript, February 16, 2024, available at SSRN, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4707346.
14. Education and nationalism are broad issues relevant to many nations. Influential work includes Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).
15. Wolfgang Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination System (Cambridge, MA: Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University; distributed by Harvard University Press, 1960). 16. Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village, 1857–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020).
17. Many scholars have conjectured that this focus on Confucian texts is the reason that China missed the Industrial Revolution. See influential work by Joseph Needham. Joseph Needham, The Grand Titration (London: Routledge, 2005).
18. Andrew G. Walder, China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
19. Xueguang Zhou and Liren Hou, “Children of the Cultural Revolution: The State and the Life Course in the People’s Republic of China,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 1 (1999): 12–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/000312249906400103.
20. Hongbin Li and Lingsheng Meng, “The Scarring Effects of College Education Deprivation During China’s Cultural Revolution,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 70, no. 3 (2022): 981–2016, https://doi.org/10.1086/713935.
21. Party History Expo, “20 70 [The Wave of Educated Youth Returning to the City in the Late 1970s ],” [China Reform Information Database], n.d., http://www.reformdata.org/2004/0215/8092.shtml.
22. , “ ...,” The Paper , August 3, 2019, https://m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_4083972?sdkver=e06426d6&clientprefet ch=1.
23. Hernandez, “China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor.” 24.
Casey Hall and Laurie Chen, “China’s Private Tutoring Firms Emerge from the Shadows after Crackdown,” Reuters, October 27, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-privatetutoring-firms-emerge -shadows-after-crackdown-2024-10-28/. 5. CENTRALIZATION AND THE RISE OF STEM 1. “Degrees Conferred,” Institutional Research and Decision Support, Stanford University, 2023, https://irds.stanford.edu/data-findings/degrees-conferred.
2. “Total Fall Enrollment of First-Time Degree/Certificate-Seeking Students in Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions, by Attendance Status, Sex of Student, and Level and Control of Institution: 1960 through 2031,” Digest of Education Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, Table 305.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_305.10.asp; Ministry of Education, “Education Statistical Yearbooks,” 2009–2021, http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_sjzl/moe_560/2020/.
3. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, “Institutional Reform and the Bianzhi System in China,” China Quarterly 170 (June 2002): 361–386, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009443902000232; Eva Huang, John Benson, and Ying Zhu, Teacher Management in China: The Transformation of Educational Systems (London: Routledge, 2016).
4. Liu Baocun and An Yalun, “Educational Administration and Leadership in China,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, May 29, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.629.
5. Ruixue Jia, Huihua Nie, and Wei Xiao, “Power and Publications in Chinese Academia,” Journal of Comparative Economics 47, no. 4 (December 2019): 792–805, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2019.08.006.
6. Hongbin Li et al., “What Can Students Gain from China’s Higher Education?,” Asian Economic Policy Review 18, no. 2 (2023): 287–304, https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12426.
7. This system is characterized as “decentralized authoritarianism” in Chenggang Xu, “The Fundamental Institutions of China’s Reforms and Development,” Journal of Economic Literature 49, no. 4 (2011): 1076–1151, https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.49.4.1076; Hongbin Li and Li-An Zhou, “Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China,” Journal of Public Economics 89, no.
9–10 (2005): 1743–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.06.009.
8. Li and Zhou, “Political Turnover and Economic Performance.” 9. The influential cross-country study on this topic is by Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, Education Matters: Global Schooling Gains from the 19th to the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2015).
10. Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-Century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
11. Hongbin Li et al., “Skill Complementarities and Returns to Higher Education: Evidence from College Enrollment Expansion in China,” China Economic Review 46 (December 2017): 10–26, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chieco.2017.08.004.
12. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “School Enrollment, Tertiary (% Gross)—China, United States” (World Bank Group), accessed April 24, 2024, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR?locations=CN-US; “College Enrollment Rates,” National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, May 2024, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate.
13. Amani Core, “Chinese Universities Chip In to Narrow Semiconductor Talent Gap,” The China Guys, June 10, 2021, https://thechinaguys.com/china-integrated-circuit-schools/.
14. Limin Bai, “Monetary Reward versus the National Ideological Agenda: Career Choice among Chinese University Students,” Journal of Moral Education 27, no. 4 (1998): 525–540, https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724980270406.
15. Paul Anthony Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, Economics, 19th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010). 16. Ruixue Jia et al., “English’s Significance: Exam Performance by Subject and Future Income in China,” manuscript, University of California, San Diego and Stanford University, 2024.
6. EDUCATION AND GLOBAL POWER 1. Loren Brandt and Xiaodong Zhu, “Accounting for China’s Growth,” IZA Discussion Paper No.
4764, Institute for the Study of Labor, February 2010, https://docs.iza.org/dp4764.pdf; Zheng Song, Kjetil Storesletten, and Fabrizio Zilibotti, “Growing Like China,” American Economic Review 101, no. 1 (2011): 196–233, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.1.196; Hongbin Li et al., “Human Capital and China’s Future Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 1 (2017): 25–48, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.1.25.
2. National Bureau of Statistics of China, Annual Statistical Yearbooks, 2001 and 2021, https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/Statisticaldata/yearbook/; National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical Yearbook: 2021, https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/ndsj/2021/indexeh.htm.
3. Li et al., “Human Capital and China’s Future Growth.” 4. For an earlier study of the relationship between education and economic growth, see Robert Barro, “Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, no. 2 (1991): 407–443, https://doi.org/10.2307/2937943; for how education quality affects growth, see Eric Alan Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015).
5. For a summary of China’s reforms, see Yingyi Qian, “The Process of China’s Market Transition (1978–1998): The Evolutionary, Historical, and Comparative Perspectives,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 156, no. 1 (2000): 151–171, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40752194.
6. Hongbin Li, Mark Rosenzweig, and Junsen Zhang, “Altruism, Favoritism, and Guilt in the Allocation of Family Resources: Sophie’s Choice in Mao’s Mass Send-Down Movement,” Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 1 (2010): 1–38, https://doi.org/10.1086/650315.
7. Robert C. Feenstra and Shang-jin Wei, eds., China’s Growing Role in World Trade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
8. Barro, “Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries.” 9. Xiao Ma, “College Expansion, Trade, and Innovation: Evidence from China,” International Economic Review 65, no. 1 (2024): 315–351, https://doi.org/10.1111/iere.12670.
10. John David Minnich, “Scaling the Commanding Heights: The Logic of Technology Transfer Policy in Rising China,” MIT Political Science Department Research Paper No. 2023–2, June 29, 2023, available at SSRN, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4496386.
11. Caroline S. Wagner, Lin Zhang, and Loet Leydesdorff, “A Discussion of Measuring the Top1% Most-Highly Cited Publications: Quality and Impact of Chinese Papers,” Scientometrics 127, no.
4 (2022): 1825–39, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192–022–04291-z.
12. Nature Index, Institution tables, April 1, 2023, https://www.nature.com/natureindex/institution-outputs/generate/all/globa l/all.
13. Chong-En Bai et al., “Entrepreneurial Reluctance: Talent and Firm Creation in China,” NBER Working Paper 28865 (National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2021), https://doi.org/10.3386/w28865.
14. Ruixue Jia, Huihua Nie, and Wei Xiao, “Power and Publications in Chinese Academia,” Journal of Comparative Economics 47, no. 4 (2019): 792–805, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2019.08.006. 15. Yigong Shi and Yi Rao, “China’s Research Culture,” Science 329, no. 5996 (2010): 1128, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1196916. 7.
VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS 1. Michael Young, The Rise of Meritocracy (London: Routledge, 1958).
2. Michael Young, “Down with Meritocracy,” The Guardian, June 28, 2001.
3. Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016).
4. Alberto Alesina and George-Marios Angeletos, “Fairness and Redistribution,” American Economic Review 95, no. 4 (2005): 960–980, https://doi.org/10.1257/0002828054825655.
5. David S. G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014).
6. The World Values Survey was founded by the political scientist Ronald Inglehart. In his influential book, he finds that East Asian cultures exhibit some distinct values. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10vm2ns.
7. World Values Survey Association, “World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017–2022),” https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp.
8. Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote, “Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different?” NBER Working Paper 11278 (National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2005), https://doi.org/10.3386/w11278.
9. Martin King Whyte, “China’s Dormant and Active Social Volcanoes,” China Journal 75 (January 2016): 9–37, https://doi.org/10.1086/683124.
10. Jia Ruixue and James Kung, “The Culture and Institutions of Confucianism,” in Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior, ed.
Benjamin Enke, Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn, and Leonard Wantchekon (forthcoming).
11. Prasad Krishnnamurthy, “Harvard’s Cult of Personality,” The Hill, October 26, 2022, opinion, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/3704542-harvards-cult-ofpersonality /#:~:text=Harvard%27s%20admissions%20officers%20determine%20pe rsonality,race%2 0can%20be%20a%20factor. 12. Hongbin Cai, Hanming Fang, and Lixin Colin Xu, “Eat, Drink, Firms, Government: An Investigation of Corruption from the Entertainment and Travel Costs of Chinese Firms,” Journal of Law and Economics 54, no. 1 (2011): 55–78, https://doi.org/10.1086/651201; Andrew Wedeman, “The Intensification of Corruption in China,” in Critical Readings on the Communist Party of China, ed. Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard (London: Brill, 2017), 1242–72, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004302488_045.
13. Hongbin Li et al., “Job Preferences and Outcomes for China’s College Graduates,” China Quarterly 258 (June 2024): 529–547, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741023001510.
14. Ruixue Jia, Xiaohuan Lan, and Gerard Padró I Miquel, “Doing Business in China: Parental Background and Government Intervention Determine Who Owns Business,” Journal of Development Economics 151 (June 2021): 102670, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102670.
15. Hongbin Li et al., “Does Having a Cadre Parent Pay? Evidence from the First Job Offers of Chinese College Graduates,” Journal of Development Economics 99, no. 2 (2012): 513–520, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.06.005.
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28. David J. Deming, “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 132, no. 4 (2017): 1593–1640, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx022. Acknowledgments Hongbin and Ruixue would like to thank those with whom they have collaborated over the years. Each has offered an invaluable contribution to the research we have referenced throughout this manuscript: Chong-En Bai, Ying Bai, Matthew Boswell, Loren Brandt, Ye Chen, Sinclair Cook, Dezhuang Hu, Gaurav Khanna, James Kung, Masa Kudamatsu, Tang Li, James Liang, Pak Wai Liu, Prashant Loyalka, Sai Luo, Yueyuan Ma, Lingsheng Meng, Grant Miller, Huihua Nie, Binh Thai Nguyen, Torsten Persson, Yu Qin, Xue Qiao, Molly Roberts, Gerard Roland, Mark Rosenzweig, Scott Rozelle, David Seim, Huan Wang, Qian Wang, Qiuyi Wang, Xin Wang, Yang Wang, Ye Wang, Binzhen Wu, Jing Wu, Wei Xiao, Jieyu Xie, Yang Xie, Yanyan Xiong, Eddie Yang, Hanmo Yang, Yiqing Xu, Yuli Xu, Junsen Zhang, and Li-An Zhou.
We would also like to thank Zhiwu Chen, Xiaoying Liao, Lingsheng Meng, and Guoguang Wu for reading earlier versions of the manuscript and providing comments that helped improve the quality of the book. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for reading the earlier draft and providing constructive feedback.
Ruixue extends her gratitude to her UCSD colleagues—Lei Guang, Gordon Hanson, Barry Naughton, Molly Roberts, and Susan Shirk—for many stimulating conversations about Chinese and American societies, as well as for the support provided by the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the 21st Century China Center.
Hongbin and Claire would like to extend their gratitude to their Stanford colleagues and friends (in addition to those mentioned above) for consistently enriching interactions and generous support, including Belinda Byrne, Jennifer Choo, Mark Duggan, Karen Eggleston, Todd Ewing, Ronda Fenton, Tom Fingar, David Flash, Gregory Gamble, Eric Hanushek, Yue Hou, Ragina Johnson, Matthew Kohrman, Jessica Leino, Yue Ma, Michael McFaul, Alexis Medina, Jean Oi, Jennifer Pan, Shih-Wei Peng, Xinyao Qiu, Heather Rahimi, Frank Scioscia, Tina Shi, Steve Suda, Michelle Townsend, Andy Walder, Chenggang Xu, Hanmo Yang, Yang Yang, Xinmin Zhao, and Xueguang Zhou.
Hongbin also thanks those who have generously supported the research and writing of this book. Claire would like to thank all those who passed through Prospect Place, including Tressa Fallon, Christopher Gernon, Zach Levitt, and Cora Rose, who collectively served as invaluable sounding boards throughout the drafting process. She would also like to thank Matthew Boswell, for his continued support and willingness to lend an ear, and Charley Burlock, for her words of encouragement on an original draft that made writing a book feel within reach. Lastly, Claire would like to thank both of her parents for their continued support across all her endeavors—educational and otherwise.
We would like to extend our gratitude to our agent, Jill Marsal, for seamlessly guiding us through the earliest stages of our process; to our editor, Grigory Tovbis, whose insight and careful readings made for a better manuscript; to Kate Brick for her extreme care and excellent editing; to Jamie Armstrong for her attention to detail in shepherding our manuscript through production; and to Harvard University Press for their support in publishing our work. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.