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Recently there has been an interesting phenomenon happening in Beijing, China called“Haidian Chicken Kid”(海淀鸡娃). This phenomenon is about a group of parents in a district in Beijing called Haidian, in order to get their kids into a good university in China or in other countries, they made a detailed plan for their kids from kindergarten to high school. At the time when other parents randomly choose a kindergarten near their home and let their kids play happily, the chicken kid parents already take their kids to all public English courses and English interview practice centers to get the kids into top international kindergartens. Ever since elementary school(usually famous schools located in Haidian), despite the normal study kids take in school, chicken kids’ parents will take their kids to study Mathematical Olympiad or higher level English during the weekend to prepare their kids for Chinese Gaokao. Some parents even look beyond Gaokao to let their kids instead apply for international universities like ivy league or Cambridge and Oxford. In this way, besides academics, those chicken kid parents didn’t fall back on children’s interests development. Piano, tennis, equestrian, all chicken kids master at least one kind of musical instrument and one sport……. The elite kids who are developed into a Chinses perception of “morally”(德), “intellectually”(智）, and “physically”（体） comprehensive development（全面发展）under the “chicken”(ji 鸡, which actually can be used as a professional jargon in China right now) of Haidian parents are called “Haidian Chicken Kid”.

Under the seemingly funny name and superly crazy education mode of those Haidian chicken kids’ parents, in fact, hidden two unresolved and increasing Chinese social issues — the uneven distribution of education resources among different cities around the whole country and increasingly indurated social mobility(which can be defined as “doing better or worse in terms of lifetime outcomes than your parents(Goldman Sachs). Although those two problems seems to be two separated social issue, the two of them combined together form a vicious cycle that he two event can be both caused and results of each others. In other words, with the social mobility getting more indurated, the allocation of resources are getting more and more uneven. While somebody might want to solve the two problems separately, I want to focus on the vicious cycle formed by those two problems together, because it is the real blocker and deep root reason of making the two events keep causes each other in China and happens to also be a global trend that disturbs the education system of other countries.

The crazy “chiken kid” mode is one of the most representative cases generated by this vicious cycle. The happening of this phenomenon can mainly be attributed to two reasons. First, from the parents’ aspect, most Haidian parents are graduated from local or international infamous universities (especially those located in Haidian like Peking University or Tsinghua University, and international include top 30 universities like USC and ivy league in America). They usually work at the companies management level and earn more than a million RMB a year. It can be said that the parents themselves already went through a “chicken” process in their childhood and entered the middle class after the effort of themselves or their previous generation. They know clearly about the importance of long-term planning and the process of admission to the infamous universities, they also maintain a high expectation on their next generation to continue the life quality and family honor, so they try their best to give the best resources to their kid. Then, at the social aspect. Beijing is the capital of China and contain the best resources (economic, working opportunities, education) that most Chinese people want to work and live in, while Haidian is the district that contains the most educational resource in Beijing and almost the whole country. Several best universities in China (Peking Universities, Tsinghua Universities, Renmin University of China) locate in Haidian, not to mention plenty of Beijing’s top elementary and high schools. It is proven that the income level is in positive correlation with the educational background and the parental educational background as well. (Checchi, Daniele) Therefore parents who live and work here have both awareness and resources get the best educational supporters for their kids to made their kid “perfect” and get into top universities to repeat the successful life of themselves. In this way, the middle class kid will always enjoy the best education resources granted by their parents and have chance to get into the top universities and maintain the life quality of the family.

From the “Haidian Chicken kids” example, we can see that there is a close relationship between education resources and income level, and the two factors both have a strong influence on each other in the current China society. Let’s first explain the education inequality in China. Just like what is mentioned in the previous paragraph, most of the top universities and schools, and even extracurricular agencies are initially gathered in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Naturally, students in metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai can obtain the best education. On the other hand, the strong economic resources in big cities will further attract people with a good educational background and high income(the middle class Chicken parents) to work and live there, which enlarge the competition for getting in top high schools, so parents need to make more effort on developing their kids to get them into a good school, and the school also need to hire more teachers to deal with expanding student body. Therefore, the education model of the “Haidian Chicken kid” is given birth, and the market demands more extra-curriculum agencies and teachers, which collects even more educational resources into the metropolis. Compare to big cities, small and medium cities in China don’t have as many top universities as Beijing and Shanghai, take Jiangsu(one of the biggest provinces in Southeastern China)as an example, there’s only one university in the whole province is among the same level with Peking Universities. Good universities in other provinces also unusually have a high quota for the students from outside provinces, not to mention the preference of foreign countries to choose student from infamous Chinese cities. The extracurricular agencies are also at the minimum amount in small and medium cities, not to mention a comprehensive development for a kid to enter the international universities. In this way, more advanced educational resources are gathered in the hand of high income people who mostly live in metropolises. Those people’s kid also have a better chance of entering good universities comparing to kids in second or third-tier cities. Kids from high income families able to also attain a high-income job and stabalize the current family social status, while kids from other cities or the rural areas have bare chances of entering good universities and made the class cross come true.

To solve the inequality mentioned above, Chinese government does try to make some effort,. For example, to increase the chance of students from country areas and minority nationalities in China(refer particularly to national minority in China like Hui nationality, but not people from other countries or races), the government give Gaokao bonus to those students, and practice the “‘both the government and the public schools of receiving cities should play a key role in safeguarding the education of migrant children(liangweizhu zhengce)’”(Yihan Xiong, 2) to encourage the “migrant children”(the kids from rural areas) to receive the education from the cities. To students live in metropolises, the Chinese government also practice th “Double Reduction policy”(shuangjian zhengce 双减政策) to reduce both inclass assignment and out-school extracurricular activities aimed to reduce student stress and the fire of extracurricular in metropolises.

Initially, those policy do benefit some minorities in China, but as time pass, some drawbacks gradually appears. At the beginning, the Gaokao bonus “has play an important role in Chinese minorities entering the university to accept higher education……most of minority students have chance to get higher education because of the Gaokao bonus policy”(Gao, Yuequn 2) In this way, the minority students in China do benefited from the government policy and get the chance of making class over. However, as time passes, due to the lack of government supervision, capitalism still exploit advantages from those policies. Once in Zhejiang, “ 13 of 19 students who attend the bonus point test are from local powerful families or teacher’s childrens”(Liu, Lianjun), and some of my high school friends also buy a Tibetan residency(hukou) to get bonus on Gaokao. The double reduction policy on the urban kids, on the other hand, do reduce student’s in-class assignment. But with kids can learn less and less in class, and are restricted on the extracurricular activities, the stressful middle class“Chicken parents” are targeting to online education. Quote from my classmate Elva, whose brother is a current high school student is China: “My brother is having online classes at home”. Some middle class parents also don’t hesitate to spend huge amount of money to “ hire the extracurricular teacher as ‘high-end housekeeper” to give personal tutor to their kids”.(Tang, Piao) Under all policies, capitalism will always find the way out of the dilemma, either using their resources or money. But things is totally different for students in second-tier cities and minority students. Those students have neither money nor access to those extracurricular teacher, they can only still competing for the few amount of university enrollment spots with no chance of getting extra help. In this way, the Chinese policies only change the beginning surface situation, but the hidden chasm between classes still hinds the lower-income group from getting equal educational resources.

The same inequality also happened also in other countries. Take Southern Korea as an example, “162 universities nationwide failed to meet their student enrollment quotas for the upcoming 2021 school year that will start in March……But the student enrollment quotas for universities in Seoul also increased, from 488 last year to 727 this year.”(Bahk Eun-ji) We can see that in Korea, the local colleges are not able to meet the quota while the universities in Seoul have to increase quota to meet the large market demand. Thus reflect a general fact in the East Asia that big cities are facing a skyscraping entering demand, while the second and third-tier cities need to confront outflow of talents. On the other coast of the Pacific Ocean, the U.S., higher social class also take control the of the education. The infamous 2019 college admission bribery scandal has already been included in one of Wikipedia entry. This is a perfect example of capitalism take control of education, which is infamous parents uses money to buy their kids the chance of getting into good universities. Not to mention the prolonged U.S. university tradition: legacy, which is the parent’s university are more likely to accept those kids. After they graduate from universities, they will undoubtedly consolidate the honor of their family and benefit all their descendants. Whether those kid entered the university through either method, they do take the opportunities of other students from normal families, first generations, and the minorities. Their further continue of family business and benefit to their next generation indurated the social mobility and hide the chance for other students.

But there are some good policies that China can take as reference. Take the U.S. as an example again(have to admit, although there are some scandals happened, the U.S. do make ghood effort on solving educational inequalities). The most representative one is the American affirmative action program in education. Even though in the current society, people blame the affirmative action for blocking the change of more qualified student entering the university, but I would argue this policy do make some progress on granting more opportunities to the minorities. The average White family today holds more than $170,000 in net assets, compared with just $17,000 for the average Black family. In turn, middle-class Black families tend to live in more disadvantaged neighborhoods than middle-class White families.”(Strauss, Valerie) In this way, the minority in American do have less access to good educational resources compare to white. They also in a worse financial situation than white, which made their next generation have less chance of entering good universities. In this way, if universities add races into one standard that will be considere during the admission process, the amount of minority entering the college can be guaranteed. The affirmative action directly using the government policies and standard to ensure the univerisity do admit more minorities, and ensure the minority are granting equal resources. One other action that the U.S. educational system did well on giving equal opportunities to students all around the countries, which is the relative even attribution of universities. Even though the top ranked universities are most private, the U.S. government ensure that all states have at least one public state universities that favor local students. In this way, even though students are not able to get in ot afford the high tuition fee of the private universities, they still have chance to enroll in their local universities to get the advanced education and replenish their educational background.

For the Chinese government, since all kinds of policies either from their own countries or other countries all show some effects but also loopholes, the government should focus on developing the clearness and fairness of the current policies. From previous observation, we can see that education can be highly reformed and changed by the government action. However, the government’s lack of supervision will also misdirect the location of education resource. “The school is sited in an environment shaped by these agencies, and to a large extent, education itself is determined by these agencies rather than existing in an autonomous field.”(Xiong, Yihan) If the government just leave the policy alone and let the education system grows by itseld, it will be hard to avoid the invade of capitalism and gather of educational resources on higher classes. So here’s what I think China should do. First, make the bonus policies for minorities more strict and fair. Keep the Gaokao bonus to minorities, but at the same time increase the scrutiny to the identity of the rewarded student before and after Gaokao. Checking the previous residency and educational background of that student to makesure she or he really have less access to educational resources, who do need help on getting higher education. Second, ensure students from all over the country have equal access to the educational resources. Since student from second and third-tier cities and minorities normally not able to enjoy the advanced level of education as the kids in the metropolises, because most of the best teachers and the best extracurricular agencies are in big cities, the government should grant the same chance for all student to access to those famous teachers’ lessons. By publicizing the those classes online, all students even from other cities or countryside can access to those lessons, they can listen to the class taught by more experienced teachers and learn knowledge in well-developed way to increase their competitiveness in the future. The government can also thus equalized the education resources by all regions in China by doing this practice.

The indurated social mobility and education inequalities keep being long-standing issues in every societies, and every policies are haveing double side. So consider both Chinese locally and the world in a total, the government should always treat the two problems together and try to create a relatively fair environment to provide equal education to every kids and prevent the pure education field from the pollution of capitalism.

Work Cited

“The UK Performs Poorly When it Comes to Social Mobility. Here‘s How It Can Improve.” Goldman Sachs, 07 Apr. 2022, https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/from-briefings-07-april-2022.html Accessed 20 Apr. 2022

Xiong, Yihan. “The Broken Ladder: Why Education Provides No Upward Mobility for Migrant Children in China.” The China Quarterly, vol.221, March 2015, pp.161–184.

Gao, Yuehan. “少数民族高考加分政策效果调查研究.” ​​Guangxi min zu da xue xue bao Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities Zhe xue she hui ke xue ban, vol.36 (3), 2014, pp.94–99.

Liu, Lianjun. “高考加分的法律分析.” School of Law-Based Government, CUPL, http://fzzfyjy.cupl.edu.cn/info/1056/4412.htm. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022

Tang, Piao. ““双减”后 中国父母为孩子教育找到新方法(图).” SecretChina, https://www.secretchina.com/news/gb/2021/11/24/990460.html. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022

Bahk, Eun-ji. “Universities Failing to Meet Student Quotas As Aociety Ages.” TheKoreaTimes, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/02/181_304484.html%20%C2%A0. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022

Strauss, Valerie. “Why race-based affirmative action is still needed in college admissions.” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/30/needed-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022

Checchi, Daniele. The Economics of Education: Human Capital, Family Background and Inequality. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511492280