Beijing uses hardest Gaokao exam to lessen the employment challenge/Record 12M sit for 2022 Exam

The 2022 Gaokao or college entrance exams, lasted 4 days and ended on June 10th. A record number of students attended the exam and many students and parents are confused as to why this year’s exams are so difficult.
The number of students taking the college entrance examination in 2021 reached 10.78 million, and the number of nationwide students enrolled in 2022 was 11.93 million, an increase of 1.15 million in one year, a record high. Such numbers also confirm that young people in China face increasingly limited options other than taking the college entrance exam.
While 11.93 million families are scrambling to get to the new starting line, another wave of people are already at the finish line of college life. 10.76 million college graduates are facing the "hardest employment season" in history in 2022.

Have questions? Do you have something to share with us about China? We want to hear from you!

Your support allows us to produce more high-quality videos.

Copyright @ China Insights 2021. Any illegal reproduction of this content in any form will result in immediate action against the person(s) concerned.

[truenorthstrongandfree]

So what I’m getting from this report is the fact that exams given out in rural areas are 10 times more difficult than those given to students in Shanghai or Beijing. The end result of this would be the fact that students in rural areas will remain in the rural areas and those in Shanghai and Beijing will go onto universities.

[LlanHeinrich]

And the "fun" thing is. Rich kids don't need to pass the test, only need to have the parents pay for their entrance. Thus blocking the poor "rubbish rural kids".

[aliikane]

"Phd graduates competing for municipal bylaw officers, toilet attendants, and assistance to police officers." Let that one sink in. Phd graduates competing for toilet attendant jobs. That is a problem.

[zakuhtet]

Uber Eats: I’m sorry. You need at least have a PhD from the Beijing University to become a delivery driver.

[geraldmiller]

My best students, when I taught English in China, were poor. My worst students were from big cities.

[williss]

If you haven't realized it yet, China is more dystopian than you think. Where you are born decides in China determines your future. If you are born in lower-tier cities, you are stuck there, and difficult to advance or move to other cities. Those born in Shanghai or Beijing become proud but it only creates division amongst the Chinese. All I see are cages. If you've said they should leave China, it's simply that they can't. It's all controlled on where you're able to move. It's impossible to even lay flat! Imagine the type of desperateness and pressure these children are born and raised with...

[AthenaCannon]

Gaokao is bullshit. All these questions on the test are not even applicable to higher education. I failed miserably with a mere 55%. I could not attend any university in China with that mark. So I came to Canada and got my engineering degree from University of Toronto. The rest is my history.

[Stalkerfan]

To me at least, the pain of knowing that achieving goals in a rigged rat race is unobtainable cannot compare to the pain of discovering that it was rigged all along. We give money hand over fist to these educrats and we spend our entire childhood being told to think of nothing else but performing for college. How utterly bitter the taste is when one finds out that spending your childhood grinding like a slave and constantly stressed was not worth it at all. Bai lan and tang ping are the only answers we have left in life.

[kaibutse]

Just imagining the kids in there panicking from the questions and the thought of their family praying hard outside the exam hall really hurts. Failing will ruin both their future/relationship with their family. A terrifying thought.

[shawnallanwebb]

Imagine sacrificing you're Childhood with blood sweat and tears, to rise up in academics and obtain a PhD, only to be a delivery guy.. .

[tus]

Crazy.

To think that these children expected that graduating in college will change their life. (It's scary when even master's or phD graduates are taking delivery jobs as their main livelihood.)

How heartbreaking must it be to take that hellish test with that kind of expectation?

[bigsisderpina]

The saddest part is that their average mentality would be, "shit's getting more rigged? Well you're obviously not trying hard enough, grind harder". It's a vicious cycle.

[yanglee]

The report is in depth and accurate enough.
I didn't expect a foreign media could explain the situation of China education so accurately.

[SVSky]

"A degree is worth less than a movie ticket, at least a ticket will get you a seat in the theater, but a degree will not guarantee you a job" -Soichiro Honda.

[DELACREMEDELAthegod]

I died when he said, “the only way to become an official in China is to learn how to be corrupt.” #ThisIsChina

[QuantumAscension]

CCP: Everybody must take this super important (barely relevant) exam to get anywhere in society, and as a bonus, not only will you lose your innocent, carefree childhood having to prepare for it, but we've also conditioned your family members to be ashamed of you if you don't do good, good luck!
Also CCP: Hey, we don't have enough "good jobs", so we're just gonna go ahead and knee-cap everyone to thin the herd, mmmkay.

[acash]

Wow, using a different question in the poorer regions is unfair.

[LeiCal]

That's a pretty brutal way to tell your young with big dreams to get back in to the factories.

[Timmy_Horsenutz]

As an American, I always used to hear about China's really stringent education standards. That they would run us over in the education game. So it's very weird knowing that a lot of their very educated are just doing Uber Eats. Makes me think that C+ in algebra wasn't that bad

[adeleennis]

I don’t know if this still applies, but I taught in a school system in Shandong Province where the top 10% of each class were able to skip the gaokao and interview with their chosen universities instead. I helped a couple of these students prepare for the interviews. I’ll admit many of these students were well off to start with so their parents had them in extra classes in their down time, which they didn’t get a lot of. Many of my 10th graders (senior 1 in China) had salt-n-pepper hair from the pressure of keeping up in such an elite school. A good number of the students I taught chose to study abroad rather than go to a Chinese university. Even more, studied in China, but chose to go abroad for masters and PhD studies. Quite a few of them are now residents of those countries now. Life is just easier outside of China for them.