For a society, it is not enough that its entry is secured through the exam and not through heritage. This, in essence, describes the paradox of meritocracy in modern China. The “gaokao” (“High School Exam”) is the English pinying name for China’s college entrance exam; it is considered to be among the most transparent routes to upward mobility for the average family. In a scenario where family ties, urbanization, and networking could affect one’s prospects, an exam is the one route that gives hope – if you work hard, earn good marks, and climb up the ladder. This is the very reason why the idea of meritocracy in itself could lead to fraud and illusion. It is true that in this process, students are judged objectively based on performance, but it does not take into consideration the differences in circumstances before that that affect a student’s ability to do well. As such, meritocracy in this sense is not just a fraud or a system devoid of any justice. In China, it is a somewhat fair selection process turned into a legitimizing myth because of the belief that success through exams means that one deserves to win or lose because of effort alone.
Meritocracy goes beyond just rewarding the gifted people. It refers to a social doctrine wherein education, employment, prestige, or wealth is awarded based on ability and work ethic instead of lineage, connections, or nobility. On the other hand, structural inequalities refer to the social structures that hinder the realization and evaluation of talent prior to the competition. This intersection occurs since merit is not a natural endowment but is nurtured, taught, tested, and certified by organizations. The concept of a fair equality of opportunity put forth by John Rawls aptly fits into this context: access should be officially available, and those who have equal abilities and drive should have equal chances despite their backgrounds (Rawls 73). Based on this definition, societies can be technically meritocratic yet fundamentally oppressive.
The Chinese gaokao reveals how meritocracy retains its ethical appeal. Introduced in 1977 after the Cultural Revolution, the test quickly became an important tool for distributing access to higher education institutions through merit-based competition rather than political influence or social ties. This difference is essential for many families, especially those who do not belong to the elite. Standardized tests tend to be less vulnerable to manipulation compared to other forms of evaluation, including interviews, references, assessments of extracurricular activity resumes, and even ratings of leadership qualities, which often reward self-assurance and family politics over actual talent. The immense size of the testing pool also enhances the ethical weight of the gaokao, as evidenced by its 2024 enrollment figures of 13.42 million candidates reported by the Chinese Ministry of Education ("China Sees"). In such a large-scale context, having a standardized assessment tool is not only practical but also essential for making mass choice transparent and ethically justifiable.
The same logic, however, warns us against viewing Chinese meritocracy as an empty facade. Relative to systems of aristocratic birthright or nepotism, there is no doubt that the gaokao creates real chances of upward social mobility. As pointed out by Angran Li, the gaokao system enables bright young people from poor rural areas to capitalize on their innate intelligence and hard work to rise above less privileged backgrounds, suggesting that the system remains open to all (Li 142). As Edwin Hao Chen Jiang argues, it is the apparent paradox between the perception that the gaokao process is impartial and legitimate despite the relatively smaller chances of success for economically disadvantaged students that makes it unique (Jiang 73). This contradiction does not merely represent an instance of hypocrisy, but the fact that the gaokao system can remain impartial during the process of testing, grading, and competing for admission to colleges.
The key question here is whether procedural equality at the end of the period of formal education makes up for the disparities in preparation throughout childhood. Meritocracy determines those with the highest level of success; however, structural inequalities ensure that students get certain advantages such as better teachers, less noise at home, additional lessons, parental support, and awareness of how the educational process works even before sitting for the exams. One can observe the existing discrepancy in statistics released by official agencies. According to the 2024 data provided by the China's National Bureau of Statistics, the per capita disposable income in urban areas is equal to 54,188 yuan while in rural areas, it totals 23,119 yuan (Households' Income). Though the income level cannot be identified as educational opportunities, it impacts almost everything concerning education from access to textbooks, extracurricular classes, technological equipment, stable housing to proper nutrition and willingness of the parents to engage in the studying process of their offspring.
This problem is compounded by the hukou system, whereby social and educational benefits depend on one’s registration category. Despite the employment of migrant workers in important urban areas, their children could face difficulties accessing local public education or participating in gaokao in the city they live in. Hence, while their assessment depends on test performance, the route to the tests itself is influenced by administrative labeling. Geographic inequality provides another dimension to this problem. As Hamnett, Shen Hua, and Liang Bingjie argue, admission to universities in China not only depends on the national exam, but also the unequal geographic allocation of universities and quota system, giving an edge to those coming from richer metropolises compared to those who come from poorer peripheral provinces (Hamnett, Hua, and Liang 252-70). The moment when two students have similar preparation and make the same effort but face different admission chances based on their provincial affiliation, meritocracy no longer becomes a meritocratic criterion.
The core problem with meritocracy does not lie in the fact that successful people do not have any talent; rather, they have talents. It lies in the idea of equating chosen achievements with pure achievements of an individual in question. The idea of cultural capital proposed by Pierre Bourdieu can help understand the notion of the equivalence between these two concepts. Families pass on not only financial capital but also communication skills, knowledge of how things work in various institutions, the concept of good taste, as well as ability to act as though one knows everything about education intuitively (Bourdieu 12-18). According to Ye Liu, the case of gaokao selection in East China proves that while there might not be any obvious socioeconomic selection according to statistics, there definitely is cultural selection (Liu 868-87).
It also makes meritocracy emotionally and ethically punishing. According to Michael Sandel, meritocracy creates an ethic where "winners see themselves as totally responsible for their success and losers see themselves as totally deserving of their failure" (Sandel 25). In the Chinese case, the meritocratic ethic is particularly brutal since the gaokao is more than just a test, but a national rite of passage involving sacrifice and destiny for the entire family. As Daniel Markovits argues, modern meritocracy can be a grueling race for both the winners and the losers, with winners being from rich families using their wealth to get a leg up, while poorer families are told that the same race is open to everyone (Markovits 9-12). Applying this model to China suggests that exam meritocracy creates inequality not by shirking effort, but through placing undue moral value on effort. If an exam is failed by a student from the countryside, the ethic of meritocracy obscures the unequal playing field.
On the other hand, these possibilities should not be overlooked. It will be unwise to take a less rigid stand on this issue, leading us to argue for the rejection of the system of meritocracy. In the case of China, adopting a highly holistic approach to admissions instead of the gaokao may end up amplifying rather than reducing the inequalities pointed out by the opponents of the gaokao system. An interview might give an edge to the confident from urban areas; a letter of recommendation might favor the prestigious institutions; an extracurricular portfolio might favor well-connected parents; and discretionary admissions might increase opportunities for guanxi. It should be noted that, while far from perfect, an open examination has the ability to limit arbitrary power. Our stand should not be against meritocracy, but rather against mythology.
An alternative system might not just focus on those who achieve the best results but also on the social circumstances that make these achievements possible. This is not about relaxing requirements but about making sure that requirements are realistic and that investments in meritocracy happen at an earlier stage. Increased spending on rural education, better teacher training in non-metropolitan regions, assistance to children of migrant workers, greater opportunities for vocational and academic excellence, and less hukou discrimination will lead to a later race that is truly merit-based. Admission systems based on regional quotas need to be judged on whether they help redress past wrongs or avoid perpetuating metropolitan privileges. In this way, reforms represent not a compromise with merit but a means of preventing the corruption of merit through class privilege. The answer to the CCIR question is thus dependent upon context. A meritocracy represents an equitable system insofar as the agencies that assess individual talent and efforts also attend to the uneven social circumstances that produce those qualities. Without such considerations, meritocracy runs the risk of remaining a fiction that camouflages inequity by reconceiving privilege as reward. What makes the gaokao so powerful is that it captures both elements of meritocracy: it grants access to those students who would otherwise have been denied entry based on their familial origins or affiliations, while simultaneously assessing achievement after a period characterized by inequitable education, inequitable income, inequitable household registration, and inequitable geographic prospects. The most accurate evaluation of the situation, then, is not that the gaokao is flawed but that it is inadequate. The gaokao can distinguish between students, but the gaokao cannot prove that those distinctions are themselves meritorious. To achieve fairness within a merit-based society, one must uphold the integrity of selection without elevating selection into destiny. Only in this way does meritocracy become fair, by acknowledging that merit is not only discovered at the testing table but crafted well before taking the test.
Works Cited
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China Sees 13.42 Mln Students Register for 2024 Gaokao. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 31 May 2024.
Hamnett, Chris, Shen Hua, and Liang Bingjie. “The Reproduction of Regional Inequality through University Access: The Gaokao in China.” Area Development and Policy, vol. 4, no. 3, 2019, pp. 252-270. doi:10.1080/23792949.2018.1559703.
Households’ Income and Consumption Expenditure in 2024. National Bureau of Statistics of China, 18 Jan. 2025.
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Markovits, Daniel. The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite. Penguin Press, 2019.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Revised ed., Harvard University Press, 1999.
Sandel, Michael J. The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
