Writing in Caixin, Zhang Ming, Director of the International Investment Research Division of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said "Data on the family backgrounds of Peking University students from 1978 to 2005, compiled by Liu Yunshan, a professor in the university’s Graduate School of Education, show approximately 30% of fresh students there came from rural families between 1978 and 1998. However, that figure dropped to about 10% between 2000 and 2011. Even though the proportion of rural students among college freshmen nationwide has increased to 60% since 2000, the proportion of rural students entering key Project 985 or Project 211 universities has decreased." Zhang Ming wrote that while social mobility was rapid in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and a college education assured a good job, the situation, unfortunately "changed significantly following the 2008 global financial crisis". He said "The cruel reality is that, several decades into the reform and opening-up period, a large gap has emerged between urban and rural schools. The educational standard in rural areas has improved only slightly over the decades, but that of the urban areas has skyrocketed. This gap has significantly lowered the success rate of rural students in getting admission to key universities". He also said "for rural students, entering university is merely the beginning of a sad story. In China, tuition fees at key universities is generally much lower than that of ordinary universities. Once a rural student is admitted to an ordinary university, his or her family may have to borrow money for the tuition. But once he or she graduates, it may be difficult to find a good job due to an oversupply of graduates from ordinary universities. Under such circumstances, it’s hard for the rural students graduating from these institutions to support a family, and even harder to repay their college loans". He added there are increasing difficulties that "a child from the countryside will encounter as he or she strives to climb the social ladder. There is a buzzword these days to describe the decline in class mobility — “pin die” (literally a fight of fathers, meaning competition based on family backgrounds). The term is a true reflection of the younger generation’s huge dependence on their parents’ generation when it comes to their class identity". Among the remedial measures he suggested were: a more robust income redistribution policy with a range of progressive property taxes such as inheritance tax, property tax, capital gains tax and so on; accelerated education reform particularly vocational education development and access to education; and that China’s education reform should focus on improving the access to education and international collaboration. He pointed out that despite a large number of key universities (i.e. Project 985 and Project 211 universities) in China, none are joint China-foreign or privately run institutions. He said if these steps are taken the many Chinese families who every year choose to send their children away to receive education in Europe or the U.S. will actually come to these elite schools in China.
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