China: University entrance exams · Global Voices
John Kennedy

A seldom-heard stance on China's tough university entrance exams (Gao Kao) from Raymond Zhou at Not only movies just days after the testing period ended: “It may sound paradoxical, but I'm not for abolishing the gaokao system. For all its quirks and partiality, it is one of the few mechanisms of meritocracy that we have. And they are improving on it. For example, unconventional essays for the writing part of the language test no longer fall through cracks automatically. Some are even commended for originality. And now, even the topics are open-ended.”