Reason Number 4 - Degrees of Unhappiness

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 7

“One of the reasons behind the system of pressure [in higher education] is the extraordinary changes higher education in China has seen in recent decades. China’s universities were shut down in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In the years since they reopened, 36 million students have been admitted. Expansion in Chinese higher education has taken place at a truly astonishing rate. In 1999, the country’s colleges admitted 1.08 million students. By 2002, that number was up to 2.75 million. In 2007, said China’s Ministry of Education, 5.7 million students would be enrolled.

No matter what course a student signs up for – or, more often, is coerced into attending, either by parents or the system itself – he or she must also take a number of mandatory courses that have nothing to do with the major.

The most burdensome of these are political indoctrination courses, such as ‘Mao Zedong Theory,’ ‘Deng Xiaoping Theory,’ and, naturally, copious quantities of Marxism, all designed to espouse political theories that almost no-one – even the tutors – believes in. Political indoctrinization courses continue right up to PhD level, and a large amount of political hagiography must be memorized and repeated by rote.

There is extremely little room for any creative thinking or disagreement in these courses; a student who has the temerity to argue against the political effectiveness of Mao, for example, will simply fail the course – no matter how cogently he or she argues – and without passing the course, they student cannot complete the degree.”

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 8

“The authoritarian treatment of students extends into every area of their life. Sex, for Chinese students, is also a subject for control by university regulations. Shanghai University, for example, expelled a student because he allowed his girlfriend to spend the night in his dorm room.

The student, Zhu Bin, explained that his girlfriend had come to see him from another university but had missed the last bus home. 'I originally intended to arrange for her to spend the night in a nearby internet café, but it was too dangerous for a girl to stay overnight with male strangers about' he said, so he took her back to his dorm. He planned to allow her to have his bed while he slept in a chair but, suffering from a fever, he lay down beside her. The next morning a dorm mate informed on Zhu, and teachers discovered him and his girlfriend on the bed.

In insisting ‘nothing happened’ Zhu perhaps legitimized the belief that sex is indeed shameful. And certainly Zhu’s mother said ‘I know that my son did something wrong, but things are not the way teachers think… the school should give him an opportunity to reform.’

When the Family Planning Commission of China’s southern Guangdong Province wanted to install condom machines in eight provincial universities in 2004, some reacted strongly. Kong Xiaoming, publicity chief of the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said ‘We firmly oppose to condom vending machines on our campus. On campus, this very move is definitely prohibited, and we would never allow students to have sex experience while in college [sic].’

Also in 2004, Beijing University – one of China’s most prestigious institutions – rejected plans to hand out condoms on World AIDS Day, saying that it was ‘inappropriate to hand out free condoms openly on campus.’”