Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
Last week’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump saw a lot of pomp and circumstance but little movement. For more on the outcomes—and why the meeting was so banal—read my full post-summit analysis.
Now, for the highlights this week: China escalates its campaign against elite education, Trump’s remarks on Taiwan generate backlash, and the United States and China mull cooperation on AI issues.
China’s Elite Education Crackdown
Chinese schools and universities are eliminating so-called key classes—elite programs for gifted students—after an official ban and a push for randomized streaming, in which students are assigned to classes through a lottery rather than test scores. Among the programs affected is a flagship mathematics program introduced in 2021 at the university level, and later into high schools, by renowned mathematician Shing-Tung Yau.
The changes are part of China’s “sunshine” program, which attempts to bring fairness and transparency to enrollment and targets supposed irregular recruitment to the top schools. Though previous efforts to curb such practices failed, this time, enforcement has been strict.
There are good reasons for the government’s intervention. Unlike in most countries, where the wealthy send their children to elite private institutions, the most well-connected Chinese high schoolers attend elite state-run schools. These occupy a place in Chinese society similar to the “Group of Seven” in the United States or the Clarendon schools in the United Kingdom.
Given China’s size, there are many regional groupings of these elite schools, some of which were private before being converted to state institutions under communism.
In Beijing, these include Beijing No. 4 High School, the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China (RDFZ), and the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University (where both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping sent their daughters).
The schools benefit from abundant resources, including highly educated teachers, international exchanges, and first-rate facilities. RDFZ boasts a high-end computer lab donated by Apple. Perhaps the most striking difference is class size. According to the most recent data, from 2019, the average high school class in China had 50 students; in elite schools I’ve lectured at, classes averaged around 20.
In theory, admission to these institutions is determined through test scores and teacher recommendations. In practice, the system is rife with bribery and influence, and many students gain entry through familial connections. In 2012, the price for bribing a student into RDFZ was reportedly between $80,000 and $130,000. (The average urban household annual income at that time was $4,273.)
Elite schools anywhere in the world are appealing in part because parents can ensure that their children will rub shoulders with the country’s future economic and political elite. But corruption extends beyond these top institutions in China: In regular schools, parents bribe teachers or education officials to secure placement in top streams and elite classes—and even prime seating in classrooms.
China’s gaokao, the national university entrance exam, is clean by comparison, due in part to a 2018 campaign to scale back certain “bonus points” that students could earn, a system that was rife with corruption. Nevertheless, elite high schools that benefit from superior resources still send a disproportionate number of students to top universities in China and abroad.
The recent crackdown is motivated both by corruption concerns and an old-fashioned communist belief in egalitarianism. Though Xi, himself the son of one of China’s founders, maintains protections for party elites, he seems to be genuinely attempting to make things fairer for regular people, echoing a 2021 ban on private tutoring.
Still, it remains unclear whether rooting out corruption is worth restricting opportunities for talented students—and whether the campaign will merely end up blocking middle-class children from advancement while reinforcing the advantages of the elite.
What We’re Following
Trump’s Taiwan fallout. U.S. President Donald Trump’s careless remarks about Taiwan since his meeting with Xi have produced a minor furor, as I predicted. In the last week, he has trotted out Chinese talking points about the dangers of Taiwanese independence and emphasized the United States’ distance from a potential conflict.
Trump also suggested that arms sales could be a “negotiating chip” in U.S.-China relations. Leaders in Taipei appear to be taking the comments in stride, but I would expect a renewed Taiwanese push to rally U.S. congressional support as well as efforts to influence Trump and his inner circle.
Rare-earths challenge. The U.S. Defense Department has unveiled another plan to challenge China’s dominance of the critical mineral supply chain, after Beijing successfully leveraged this advantage last year in retaliation to Trump’s trade war threats. Color me skeptical, given the repeated failures of similar efforts in the past decade.
To be fair, China’s actions may have added urgency to a once-hypothetical threat, and the United States does have some points of leverage. But challenging China on critical minerals is a complex industrial and commercial endeavor, managed by a U.S. administration lacking talent and a president eager to curry favor with Xi. Beijing probably doesn’t have much to worry about.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Chinese Hegemony Might Be Happeningby Stephen M. Walt
- The Trump-Xi Summit Was Remarkably Banalby James Palmer
- There’s No Need to Fear China’s Economyby Theodore Bunzel
Tech and Business
U.S.-China AI cooperation? Trump and Xi discussed cooperating on artificial intelligence issues during their summit last week. Though the United States and China have collaborated on shared threats in the past, doing so in this case will be difficult given their divergent approaches to AI governance and the risk of cooperation becoming a political target.
Another complication is that U.S. AI companies are using the specter of Chinese domination to advance their own agendas in Washington. For instance, Anthropic recently released a paper that lays out two scenarios for the future of global AI leadership: a democratic one (if they get the lax regulation and government support that they desire) and an authoritarian one (if they don’t).
Economic slump. Amid all the recent coverage of China’s ascendancy, it’s easy to overlook how sluggish the country’s economy remains. The latest economic data revealed almost universally disappointing trends across consumer spending, investment, and real estate, among other sectors.
Much of the economic slowdown reflects the impacts of the Iran war. Though China has sought to leverage the conflict’s opportunities, including by supplying Australia with jet fuel, it continues to face significant strains from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
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