The western sense of morality didn’t stop the admissions scandals to all top western universities like Harvard Stanford and so on.
Chinese universities as far as I know don’t have things like institutionalized legacy admissions.
I’d like people to reconsider the view that western societies are somehow inherently purer or less corrupt. Often it takes different forms.
This can be seen in the way sanctions are imposed for companies using slave labor in Xinjiang but there is not nearly as much reflection on the vast amounts of prison labor in the US mostly of people unjustly given heavy sentences. In fact the number of people in American prisons rivals the number of people in Soviet gulags. Yet there is no shortage of sanctimony or moral rectitude.
Anything wrong with western society is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise just system but anything wrong outside the west is a civilizational failing that can only be fixed by adopting some theoretical enlightenment values which the west itself struggles to practice without hypocrisy.
We can criticize others and ourselves without essentializing or casting ourselves as inherently moral.
While I think we should criticize others and call them out for their bad behavior I do want to stress that it is very important to hold ourselves to a high standard. This is an essential part of a democracy. There is always room to improve. We are trying to form a more perfect union. Criticize others to learn from their mistakes. Criticize ourselves so we fix ours. (I do think think self criticism is common in the west though often misunderstood, even amongst ourselves. Especially in the current political climate)
I don't think it's just rampant in non-democratic vs democratic societies. A colleagues wife had him sit and take her entire online pharmacy class for her, sitting online as her for the entire course. He is a physician and had to actually take the classes themselves because when he tried to sit just for the exam for her he didn't get a high enough score. Other than checking IDs in person for exams, I'm not sure how to prevent someone else sitting behind the computer for you during an online course.
I don't think you meant to respond to me. I was talking about being critical of your state and others. I think you meant to respond to the more generalized discussion of cheating. This discussion diverted a little from that.
The same universities that were affected by the scandal regularly give admissions for donors’ kin. It’s just that the money went to a third party instead of the college in the scandalous cases. Free market - not arguing the morality of it - allows for the person with the resources to get an edge on various things - from life saving medical treatment to life changing opportunities.
> It’s just that the money went to a third party instead of the college in the scandalous cases.
That's a pretty huge difference. Letting someone donate money in exchange for admission smells bad, but if the donation is larger than the cost, they made more room for others than they occupied themselves. If a third party captures the "donation", that's just a roundabout form of theft/embezzlement.
I don't know of any people who say that the US is entirely a meritocracy. I have heard the argument that success in the US is _more_ based on merit than it is in certain other places, or that basing success on merit is good and is something we should strive to do more than we currently do, but "it is possible to get ahead in ways other than merit" does not disprove either of those.
Maybe that’s a bit grand to say “Western Society” where both examples would not apply to other non English speaking Western countries.
The American high incarcerations rate is an exception in the western world.
Legacy admissions simply do not exist in countries like France or Germany. Some elite engineering colleges in France have an exam based admission system very similar to the Chinese one but identity theft on this scale has never occurred.
"I’d like people to reconsider the view that western societies are somehow inherently purer or less corrupt. "
That's fine, we can be open to that perspective, but we should also try to be objective and accept that there are rough objective measures of 'corruption', upon some places are going to do better than others, and that arguments based on cultural relativism are usually not very strong.
Transparency international has at least one take on it [1]
Chinese universities do have this concept -- certain students are marked VIP, so that professors will know.
But the concept of granting admission based on such status, as opposed to extending special treatment to an admitted student, is very much muted.
There are ways of getting in to a university without passing the gaokao threshold that would ordinarily be required. But those generally involve receiving a point boost that the college has the official discretion to offer, or doing well on an alternative test -- someone scoring 303 out of 750 would obviously not pass a lower discretionary threshold either.
Note that when "officials in Shandong say new processes are now in place to make sure such incidents will not happen again", they are correct -- it's already possible to look up both your gaokao score (this girl's score wasn't falsified; rather, her identity was stolen) and the 分数线 that applied to you when you applied to a school. The problem would be instantly detected[1] by anyone who felt bitter about what happened -- and this is quite likely, since you have a strong idea of what your gaokao score will be before you actually take the test. (You have to, because you apply to colleges before you get your official result.)
China as a civilization takes the notion of a merit based on examinations very seriously. They pioneered this system hundreds of years before anywhere else in the world.
Cheating may exist but in terms of valuing meritocracy China has it as deeply ingrained as the west.
On paper, yes, China takes official examination rather seriously. In realty, a saying in China goes: as long as there are exams, there are cheaters.
An ancient Chinese source estimates that 20% to 30% participants of imperial exams are imposters.
Endless examples of high ranking officials pave way for their descendants to succeed as top performers. A renown prime minister invited the chief examiner to his library, where he had removed all reading materials except a copy of an essay his son would write for the upcoming exam. The chief examiner was left waiting forever, so he was forced to read the only reading material within reach. When he later read it again as part of national exam, he recognized it immediately and made the the son of the prime minister NO. 1. This only came out because the emperor did not want PM's family become too powerful, but merely demoted the son from NO. 1 to NO. 3.
Not unlike elite institutions in the West, publicly the imperial exam system was lauded but a system of "donation" co-existed to fill official posts. This is a legal way to buy one's way into officialdom. "Legacy" entry was also available, not unlike today's system in China or elsewhere. Human nature prevails everywhere.
Cheating is also deeply ingrained in the culture, though. Much like it is in the US entrepreneurial culture (not just VC backed companies and fortune 500s, but mom and pop businesses).
Old history is one thing, but the whole country being run as a corporation for the past 70 years is another.
Official VIP students... wow that’s horrifyingly corrupt. Clearly admissions is also letting things slide, just with less official backing as fewer people need to be involved.
In the US, collages have more or less rigorous programs rather than simply letting people slide through.
You just said: “There are ways of getting in to a university without passing the gaokao threshold that would ordinarily be required.”
VIP students is a way to communicate across the university. Otherwise professors have no way of knowing who they need to give extra leniency to. I know collage professors at several schools and we really have nothing widespread like that.
It’s useful for people very close to the cutoff, but comparing a few legacy students vs regular ones and the difference is not that obvious. Especially when you consider parents of legacy students often help them distinguish themselves well in advance via appropriate after school activities etc.
Trump transferred to Wharton after two years at Fordham. Fred Trump was a NYC real estate developer with no connection to either school; successful in his world of outerborough residential developments, sure, but an utter nonentity outside it.
George W. Bush was a longtime legacy at Yale, yes, but he performed about as well as Kerry did at Yale and Gore did at Harvard. With no family connections to Harvard he applied to HBS without telling his father, who had by then served as a one-term Texas congressman and UN ambassador, and was serving as the head of the Republican National Committee. To show how little "pull" the Bush name had despite all that, Bush was turned down by the University of Texas law school before getting in at HBS.
>The western sense of morality didn’t stop the admissions scandals to all top western universities like Harvard Stanford and so on.
Chinese universities as far as I know don’t have things like institutionalized legacy admissions.
As far as I'm aware, it's an American trope, not a « Western » one. But it makes sense that kind of practice would occur in the US where universities were founded by communities to educate their own people, rather than as extensions of the State.
Just as many Chinese citizens are proud of their country and culture, there are lots of people in the US who are proud of their country and culture. Are there lots of hypocrites in the United States? Yes. Are there lots of naive people? I mean people still love Trump now while the rest of the world laughs at us. The people in both societies are flawed so let's put that aside.
If we look at both systems (and not as individuals), the US as a whole makes an attempt to do what's right and the system attempts to correct bad behavior. The original founders tried to prevent any one person from usurping power through checks and balances. As Trump tries to upend the country, the Supreme Court restricts what he can do but also tries to ensure the presidency retains power against the legislative branch. Trump has very little power against the Supreme Court and his Supreme Court appointees have voted against him several times already.
Citizens in United States can take to the street to protest against change. Does it always work? Most of the time no. But occasionally, with George Floyd's case, some changes are happening. When individual citizens has their rights taken away, it is possible to sue the government. When this is taken to the Supreme Court and the citizen wins, change happens.
These things will not necessarily get us to a better place but the mechanism for the people to make the change is enshrined in the constitution. Fortunately, this mechanism does eventually guide us to the right place. So far.
As far as I can tell, this kind of corrective behavior does not work in countries like Russia, China and North Korea. It's citizens cannot demand change. What these countries do have is a level of efficiency that democracies will never match. I am envious of this. I am jealous of China's high speed rails and it's ability to erect large cities and hospitals in a matter of months and days.
No doubt United States is in a bad place right now. It has lost its leadership status in the world, it's citizens are sick and dying with a virus that the rest of the world has controlled, and citizens are demanding to not be murdered by their police. However, Trump will most likely be voted out in the fall. Congress is slowly passing laws for better police reform. Counties and states who do not agree with the President covid policies can work against the President's demands to better protect their citizens. Yes there will be problems. Some bad actors will get away with unethical and immoral behaviors. However, the system will attempt to correct the problem. This is why Western democracy is regarded higher than dictatorships in countries like Russia, China and North Korea. The system in United States will give its citizens a better chance to weather the storm than a country with dictatorship.
Western democracy is really being torn at the seams with Trump and Brexit. Both are policies which any sane outside observer will conclude are extremely harmful in the long term. However because of brainwashing a large portion of the citizenry are okay with it anyway.
Large sections are manipulated via social media by forces both external and internal dipping society into chaos even in the midst of existential threats like covid.
This is like saying yes we invaded a country and unleashed mass death but we also protest against it and make poignant films about how our soldiers felt really bad doing it so it’s all okay and it makes us better than those who don’t. The point is to not do it.
As we speak Iranians are dying in droves in the middle of a pandemic made worse by cruel sanctions imposed by the very people claiming to be enlightened. Imposing sanctions in the middle of a pandemic is nothing short of a crime against humanity.
As a Chinese person, I totally understand that Chinese culture is not ok with tyranny. China's rise to riches can only be done with the efficiencies of a dictatorship. In order to understand China, you must understand China's poverty and shame from foreign rule.
With China's new digital surveillance system, it will be pretty hard to overthrow any dictator. China's control on news and media will ensure loyalty from a large percentage of the population. People who were critical of China's initial Covid response were silenced. Some disappeared. I guarantee you many people of Wuhan did not think that there was prosperity and justice.
Western democracy is being tested but I think the United States constitution is holding up pretty well. Today's Supreme Court ruling was 7-2 against Trump, with both justices nominated by Trump voting against Trump. The Supreme Court is focused on being impartial, so the navigated a ruling that will only release Trump's tax returns after the election.
"We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need." - Justice Roberts
The Supreme Court, 9-0 affirmed that the President is not above the law. This ruling will be executed on up and down the government chain. Trump wants to build a wall but he can't. Trump wants to deport DACA immigrants and he can't. While Trump did accomplish a lot for Republicans, the most egregious actions were prevented. Ultimately, Trump's damage can be limited and contained.
I agree that the US does not know how to handle foreign interference through social media. Trump seems like he's allowing it to happen. I'm reserving judgement till the next president gets involved. I also agree that Iran sanctions from Trump is criminal.
Ultimately, no system is perfect. United states and Western democracies are designed to limit the damage, which in turn can limit upsides. Dictatorships are efficient but can easily run afoul. The hope is that we can all choose the system we prefer.
> China's rise to riches can only be done with the efficiencies of a dictatorship.
You probably have heard that propaganda piece so often that you think it's true.
A part of China is rich despite the dictatorship murdering 70 million of its people; miraculously, that democide set back the country only by twenty years. If one wants to blame anything for making people rich, its the effects of unfettered turbo capitalism as practiced after Deng.
Why would that be worse. The Han chinese are keeping the government in power. Without their support this government would fall. They as a group have a vote. But a general policy with fines is not what we are talking about.
Millions of Uighurs are forced into camps. They force them to take pills so they cannot have kids. Then they mass migrate han chinese into the region. One day soon they can say the majority are han chinese.
Europe will start putting pressure on China when they realize building this direct road to London China is building is the reason for the suffering they will impose punishment. Meanwhile the US has started creating a different supplies chains excluding China. When grow slows what will happen in China? Will the people revolt? Going to be an interesting 10 years.
Dictatorships can work great, but all it takes is one bad dictator and you are hosed. E.g. the complete ceasation of progress in China once emporers decided to cut off access to the outside world and outlaw logic.
When Google took $500M fine and $300M to share holders for Rogue Pharma Ads. While the counterpart in China --- Baidu, with rogue hospital ads which lead to the death of a young man. LOST NOTHING.
Laws are enforced differently throughout the world. But it's not enforced in CCP controlled China for certain groups.
Chinese universities as far as I know don’t have things like institutionalized legacy admissions.
I’d like people to reconsider the view that western societies are somehow inherently purer or less corrupt. Often it takes different forms.
This can be seen in the way sanctions are imposed for companies using slave labor in Xinjiang but there is not nearly as much reflection on the vast amounts of prison labor in the US mostly of people unjustly given heavy sentences. In fact the number of people in American prisons rivals the number of people in Soviet gulags. Yet there is no shortage of sanctimony or moral rectitude.
Anything wrong with western society is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise just system but anything wrong outside the west is a civilizational failing that can only be fixed by adopting some theoretical enlightenment values which the west itself struggles to practice without hypocrisy.
We can criticize others and ourselves without essentializing or casting ourselves as inherently moral.