Discontent surges among China’s middle class over education
Society & Culture
Top society and culture news for February 7, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "New Beijing mayor ‘vows to banish parts of the city to the provinces.’"
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China’s middle class anger at its education system is growing / Foreign Policy (paywall)
Last May, thousands of parents in 13 cities across Jiangsu Province as well as Hebei Province took to the streets to protest against a joint announcement made by the Ministry of Education and the National Development and Reform Commission. It required universities in 14 developed provinces, including Jiangsu and Hebei, and big cities like Beijing and Shanghai to allocate 210,000 spots for students from China’s poor inland areas. As the government has been gradually taking steps to promote education equality through reforms, anxiety spread among China’s provincial urban middle class who found themselves “caught between disdain for poor areas they see as unfairly compensated, and annoyance at richer ones that suck up the best resources.”
- Study retraction reignites concern over China’s possible use of prisoner organs / Science
- Why China is ripe for the couch – a country in need of psychological treatment / NYT (paywall)
- How the one-child policy has improved women’s status in China / What’s on Weibo
- Despite a new law, China is failing survivors of domestic violence / Washington Post
