China to make decisive move for the Spratly islands?

Great Debates
81

Now let us consider how China, which you say the OECD praises, fares in education from the OECD site itself.

Here are the relevant statistics.

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/country-statistical-profile-china_csp-chn-table-en

Tertiary attainment in population aged 25-64
%
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Expenditure per student: non-tertiary, 2009 prices
USD constant PPPs
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Expenditure per student: tertiary, 2009 prices
USD constant PPPs
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Youths 15-19 not in education nor employment
%
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Youths 20-24 not in education nor employment
%
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Yep, China’s doing so well that it has to keep all information secret for fear of a massive influx of foreigners swamping their schools with their children.

I guess.

The OECD is praising nothing here. The OECD is taking one mainland city, the only city that the Chinese government will allow them to assess, the city the elite invariably move to, the city the rich invariably move to, the city where they’re most inclined to experiment with educational reform, and releasing figures that show the nation in a good light in one specific and very limited area, the area you would expect people to excel in when subjected to rote-learning and have their creativity stifled.

No one’s buying it as ‘China’s education system ain’t so bad really’, Mijin. No one outside China, no one inside. Anyone here with the cash to send their children abroad for education does just that. No one is buying it except you. I just don’t get it.

82

Actually, damn it, this proves the education system is a failure.

If Britain were to do the equivalent - say, limit information on British universities to Oxford and Cambridge and high-school scores to Eton, releasing those as representative of the nation and refusing to release any other data to the OECD - I would bloody-well hope we’d do better than just top the world in Maths.

And that’s without Whitehall trying to cheat the figures on top of that.

Mijin, this is pathetic. Why are you doing this? Seriously, I’m intrigued now.

83

Yet another article demonstrating how divorced the Shanghai education system is from the Chinese mainland’s mainstream.

In spite of all of this, the figures were still inaccurate given that only the children from the better schools were assessed given the hukou system.

It appears these figures were treated as farcical from the outset, and with good reason.

What does it take, Mijin?

84

So… let’s summarise that little lot.

You have a nation notorious for the failure of its education system because of over-emphasis on rote-learning and propaganda. This is what that country does.

i), it takes a city of 23 million people out of a population of 1.3 billion.
ii), the city selected is absolutely atypical in terms of its economic situation.
iii), the city is the target of every person capable of attaining anything across the entire country.
iv), the city selected is run on a different education system which is attempting to rid itself of the failings of the system as a whole nationwide.
v), you only permit the better schools to participate in the survey.

Result? Students come out top in the world when it comes to areas of rote-learning when compared with other nations who participate as a whole, good and bad.

That’s worth a Homer Simpson “Doh!” or three when you actually sit down and think about it, isn’t it?

petemarchetto.com

85

Dude, relax. You just posted 7 posts in a row.

86

I’ll bet you a pound to a penny that it makes no difference to the discussion, though.

I could write a book’s worth in here. Start looking for the Chinese education system in any way, shape or form, or do a hunt for these mysterious Shanghai figures, and it just comes gushing out of the sources.

I blame Google…

:smack:

petemarchetto.com

87

It’s a shame, I find your experiences teaching in china interesting and I would have been happy to adjust my position somewhat if we could have just discussed it.
Instead you’re just completely freaking out.

In case anyone read only your last 7 posts and thinks you are accurately describing my position, all I have said is this:

I don’t think we can say that the Chinese education system sucks, period, when at the very least we know that Shanghai and Hong Kong have excellent results in international comparisons of reading, maths and science. Furthermore, the special advisor on education to the OECD has gone on record saying that results elsewhere in China, including poor provinces, are similarly impressive but could not be published.

88

Furthermore, the special advisor on education to the OECD has gone on record for saying that results elsewhere in China, including poor provinces, is similarly impressive but could not be published.

Reference?

89

It was in the BBC interview I linked earlier

90

Interesting, genuinely.

I did some research on all this after the things you’d said, and Schleicher’s name came up repeatedly as that of the - as far as I can see - sole defender of Shanghai being considered somehow as a ‘city state’ in its own right in the rankings. Everyone else, (bar one spokesman from Shanghai itself), has been raising the obvious questions as above.

This blows my socks off.

**In an attempt to get a representative picture, tests were taken in nine provinces, including poor, middle-income and wealthier regions.

The Chinese government has so far not allowed the OECD to publish the actual data.

But Mr Schleicher says the results reveal a picture of a society investing individually and collectively in education.**

This is certainly a whole new side of the Chinese government I’ve never seen before, too modest to talk up success and withholding information given that modesty, to sit alongside the Chinese education system I don’t recognise.

I would say this, Mijin. With Schleicher an individual who should, most assuredly, be a credible witness - nay, an expert - given his position, I’m not surprised that you see your POV as valid given that it reflects his. I have never, in the (literally thousands) of teachers I’ve spoken with as a very active member of an overseas teachers’ online group, come across anyone who would describe the system here as anything better than very, very much below average, certainly worse than the system back in their home countries. (I have just seen an image from a Chinese classroom with everyone with their heads down on the desk asleep bar one attentive student and a second on the way down, the teacher soldiering on regardless, and though an extreme case, students sleeping in class is a commonplace and, again, hardly reflective of the go-gettem attitude Schleicher paints here. Indeed, the students I’ve spoken with rarely know what they’re doing, they’re just ‘following orders’, those of the lecturers and college leaders who are prescriptive right down to weekend activities and their parents in sending them there in the first place).

Indeed, I’m not getting this to such an extent that I’m going to stick it out there in the teachers’ group now - though sadly it’s a lot less vibrant than it used to be - and see if anyone can recognise their own institutions in Schleicher’s description. I’ll get back to you on that.

I would say, though, that as the only person I’ve come across with any authority saying this about the Chinese education system, and as the representative of the very heavily-criticised test that put China, (ie., the better schools in Shanghai), top of the world in comparing them with other nations as a whole, he does rather have a vested interest in defending his position. My first impression, quite frankly, is that in doing so he’s being something considerably less than credible. Either that or I have to dismiss seven years’ teaching here, including at one of the nation’s top universities, as just a bad dream.

petemarchetto.com

91

Ok.

One reason that the results seem plausible to me is that other East Asian countries are also returning impressive results in these (and other) tests. And though obviously the region is not one homogenous block, when it comes to teaching approaches they seem more similar to each other than to Western methods.
If China’s results are only the result of cheating, or massaging the figures, and these teaching methods simply don’t work, then that would have to be just one part of cheating on a scale the world has never before seen.

But sure, I’m not about to make any claim about these tests. Maybe they are junk. But at this time I don’t have any compelling reason to reject them and take the opposite position.

OTOH, if you want to say that rote learning and associated teaching methods stifle creativity then, yes, I agree. I already said as much. But there’s a difference between saying that and saying that the quality of education sucks, period.

Well, this is one of the cultural differences I’ve noticed in my time here, and I would be careful about how you interpret such images.

In my office it is not uncommon for someone to put their head down on their desk. Also in meetings one or two people may close their eyes.
In both cases the actual amount of time they spend like this is just a few minutes, so I doubt they sleep. It’s more like (genuinely) resting their eyes, and that’s considered an acceptable thing to do here.

It would be trivial for me to cherry-pick a moment where multiple people are doing this at the same time, and take a very misleading photograph.

92

Again, this is personal experience - mine and many another’s. The hours students spend studying are so onerous they simply can’t take in new information half the time, and teaching students not to sleep in the classroom is something that all foreigners here have to get used to. No, it’s not the odd wink. Left to their own devices, many students would sleep away entire lessons and many students are indeed left to their own devices. Given that much of the lesson may only be the teacher standing there reading from a book anyway, they know they can catch up later. Sorry, but again, indicative, not some biased reportage. The photo was amusing only insofar as it showed so many of the students at it.

I once had to visit the classroom of a Chinese teacher well-known to be a strict disciplinarian and feared by his students, this in the middle of a lesson. About a third of the students were asleep. Go figure.

I still say the system sucks insofar as it may turn out a host of good mathematicians, but it’ll turn out precious little else and, quite frankly, take the nation as a whole as others were taken as a whole and I don’t believe for a moment China would shine even in that. Rote-learning of strictly factual information and methods is great for maths though, undoubtedly. Sucks for so much else, unfortunately.

I have a wealth of experience from some ten or twelve Chinese universities, Mijin, and - as I said - over 3,000 students. I know the Chinese government well enough to know if they had a national success on their hands they’d not be hushing it up.

All I see here is the best schools in the land turning out good mathematicians. That falls a long way short of an endorsement for a national system of education. Indeed, if that’s the best that can be said, then the system sucks.

www.petemarchetto.com

93

Seems the PLA mightn’t even need to leave the comfort of their barracks’ bunks to ‘invade’ whatever island chain they please, with little more than a notebook perched in their lap:

More yellow / red peril / Rev 9:16 fear-mongering and bluster or are the Chinese now living up to their one-time innovative reputation and making Goliath-like strides to countering the U.S.'s military supremacy? It seems inevitable, in some respects - from a lay standpoint - given how much money they have to throw around these days, from all the plastic sporks we got them to make for us… After all, It’s not like they’re gonna spend the dough on welfare! :stuck_out_tongue:

I used to see poop flinging contests around here a while back with those warning of China’s military rise summarily dismissed using slights about The Middle Kingdom being little more than a rusted out Ruski carrier with a burdensomely large standing army with rickshaws entrained. Yet, now (if this article has any semblance of credence to it), it seems the star spangled banner head kerchiefs might be soaking up more sweat than they once were…

Also, what of this ‘Clinton selling pew-pew tech to the Sinos’ business? Is there any truth to it? Did the concupiscent, celebrity saxophonist really sell the nation (West?) out for a handful of beans – a transaction with the Devil that’s now beginning to bear fruit for the red thumbs? :dubious:

94

On the one hand, China’s need to steal from the west in order to get most of its technological improvements is now legendary, whether it be in commerce or in the military arena. My favourite military theft was the one in which CCTV proudly showed an aircraft blowing a drone out of the sky. The victim of the theft on that occasion was Hollywood, specifically Top Gun.

I’m assuming that link is blocked here in China given its embarrassment, but if it’s not up then check around the net.

On the other hand, I think it’s unsurprising that a nation which just managed to land it’s first robot on the moon should be capable of producing intercontinental delivery systems for nukes and other weaponry.

I can’t say I applaud it. Then again, I can’t say I blame China much. I think we can only blame ourselves. The Old World Order post-1945 was built on the idea that those with the biggest military muscle - ie., nukes - should be given a privileged position in the New World Order by having permanent seats on the UN Security Council. All those members are now - unambiguously - in contravention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty given that it’s framed not only to ensure that other nations do not acquire nukes, but also that those who already possess(ed) them should get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. Over a half-century on, I think good faith is out the window on that one.

One blatant proclamation on this came from dear Tony Blair. When he talked about upgrading our own nuclear arsenal, he was asked why we would want to do that. His response was… who knows what the future may hold? Well, who ever does? With that attitude then we never can fulfil our obligation under the NNPT but, moreover, every nation on the planet - including the likes of North Korea and Iran - can use pretty much the same argument for acquiring them in the first place.

We had a great opportunity in 1989 to make the possession of nukes anathema on the world stage by getting rid of them ourselves, but we didn’t. We hung on to them without so much as a second thought. Now look at the mess we’re getting into all over the shop when it comes to nukes, and we can hardly take the high ground in attacking anyone else who acquires them or who has them and improves their own delivery system.

Sad to say, what followed WWII was the reign of a military-economic superpower, and all China is doing is emulating that. For a while under Hu, the model followed was far more that of the EU - a diplomatic-economic superpower. With Xi’s premiership, however, we’re back to the Jiangite approach. “Now listen carefully. We can blow you up, so listen very carefully indeed.”

So yes, it’s sickening. Unfortunately, we’re hardly in a position to complain. It’s the model China inherited from the west, and I don’t think we can blame them for showing no more sense than we have shown over the past 70 years or so.

www.petemarchetto.com

95

Herein lies my concern: that we persist in gauging China’s actions through a Western prism – a sure fire way of miscalculating what The Middle Kingdom are capable of and even spoiling for.

Case in point: that famed tunnel system beneath The Great Wall that houses a large portion of China’s missile arsenal, and how the revelation (to the public, at least) of these catacombs now has some analysts’ estimates of the nation’s nuclear stock pile far beyond what the China previously confessed to possessing; ranging anywhere from 2500 to 3000+ warheads (up from the comparatively paltry <400). Now, I know China profess to adhere to a ‘no strike-first’ policy. But, if they fibbed about their ordnance stockpile, to that extent, what else can they potentially be telling the silly laowai tall tales about? And besides that, who have the largest standing army in the world to fear that they feel the need for all that elaborate dissembling of civilisation-ending wormwood?

That is to say, they have designs on Taiwan; the disputed islands with Japan; the topic du jour Spratlys… The historical beefs with the drug-dealing Brits; the French and Yanks’ sacking of The Forbidden City; the stubborn Japanese for a gamut of reasons… They persist in propping up the crazy Kim cult to act as a buffer zone… Then you have the C.I.A. prognosticating conflict for the region by 2025, ostensibly over water resources… They’re communist… The innate belief of superiority stemming from their ancient culture… I just dunno. It seem like the ingredients are present for a ‘guerre gumbo’ that could drag in all and sundry.

And with the seeming advent of China being in possession of weapons that can actually deter the U.S. honouring its pacts with the Philippines and Japan, I’m finding it hard to see how this doesn’t all spiral into Cold War II: The Dim Sum Doomsday. That, or the U.S. crawls back into its pre-WWII isolationist shell and China [again] gets to rule the roost. Not exactly the most auspicious of outcomes, either way.

96

Okay.

Now conduct the same critique of the USA from a non-western perspective and see how similar they look.

This is the paradigm China inherited. Let’s not expect them to behave better than us. Let’s not kid ourselves that, up to now, they’ve behaved any worse.

When it comes to the possession of weaponry the purpose of which is to wipe out a large slice of humanity entirely indiscriminately and to poison the planet ever after, no one gets my applause.

petemarchetto.com

97

Well done the USA - and here’s hoping the global community gets behind them in doing this.

The United States’ top diplomat on East Asia has suggested China’s wide-ranging territorial claims in the South China Sea do not comply with international law and should be clarified or adjusted.

I was talking with a Chinese patriot some time around the middle of the second Hu term, and he told me BJ had announced that the claim was in no way set in stone. As far as I could gather looking in the obscure places to which he directed me, China has had to back off when it’s been questioned given it is so preposterous but, as usual, if the claim is not questioned long and loud, China is prone to forgetting it has backed off at all and is there again standing right back where it started as if nothing had ever happened.

It’s time some bluffs were called here for once and for all. China must be wondering how the hell it gets away with so much nonsense while the world just looks on, shuffles its feet a bit and lets out the occasional muttered ‘Oh, I say, we’re not too sure that’s quite on, you know…’

Like a small, recalcitrant child, it will keep trying it on. Like a small, recalcitrant child, China has to be told long, loud and repeatedly to just stop it. Like a small, recalcitrant child, it needs to learn boundaries. And, like a small, recalcitrant child, many of the boundaries it has to learn about are there for its own good as much as, if not more than for anyone else’s.

Right now, if there’s any there, the nations around the South China Sea could be pumping oil out from under it and China could profit from that as much as anyone, perhaps more than most. While it keeps shouting ‘We want it all!’ it’s not going to see any of it, and neither is anyone else.

China tends to back down when it’s told it’s being silly, provided it’s told so repeatedly and loudly enough. On this, and on a few other issues, the time is now long overdue. No wonder they think foreigners are stupid. If only they could see that the rest of the world is taking a back seat thinking that, sooner or later, China will work out what is in its own best interests. If on the rest of the world could see that never seems to happen where China is concerned.

A handful of individuals not drawn from the best and the brightest in the gene pool make major decisions unchallenged from within. The challenge needs to come from without… for China’s own sake more than for anyone else’s.

Pete

www.petemarchetto.com

98

In a further development, the Philippines is to take the matter of China’s claim to international adjudication.

And about time someone did.

100

Seconded.

Nice one, iLemming.

101

I wonder when and for where the next concocted claim will come… Australia is an ‘island’ abundant in resources, too. :rolleyes: