In the Diplomat, Jiang Xueqin brainstorms ideas to replace the dreaded gaokao college entrance exam, and comes up with… the gaokao:

In his book A Theory of Justice, the political philosopher John Rawls conducted a thought experiment in which people, shrouded under a ‘veil of ignorance,’ were asked to devise a new social structure to live under. Unsure of their lot in this new society, people would be risk-averse, John Rawls assumed, and would agree to a society that ‘maximised the minimum,’ which is to say a society that aimed for equality, fairness, and social mobility.

So let us return to John Rawls’ ‘original position’ and ‘veil of ignorance,’ gather 1.3 billion Chinese into a nice conference room, and see if we can all work together to negotiate an alternative to the gaokao.

Because everyone in the room has Chinese cultural values and lives in the not too pleasant realities of modern China, there’ll be certain constraints that this new education system must consider. First, every Chinese can agree that this new education system ought to be a meritocracy and that the most diligent and brightest students ought to reach the top.

Second, every Chinese can agree that China has limited education resources for too many people; while it would be nice to educate everyone to the best ability of the state as is the case in Finland and Singapore, China is too poor to do so. Third, China is a guanxi-based society with little respect for institutions, processes, and laws; whatever new system that everyone agrees to must be able to resist the pull and power of the well-connected and wealthy. Fourth, Chinese can agree that education is first and foremost about social mobility (rather than about national economic development), about the opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard to rise in society.

So, given all this, we can now begin constructing an alternative to the gaokao.

See also a report from Marketplace on the impact of the gaokao on student’s lives.

15 year-old Sun Jia Lu wakes up each morning at six, eats breakfast on the bus to school, sits through eight classes, and then returns home where she studies until one in the morning the following day. She wakes up five hours later and repeats. Weekends aren’t for resting. They’re for tutoring sessions. She’s done this for nine years. “All of this for the gaokao,” she tells me outside her high school in a Beijing suburb. The gaokao, China’s college entrance examination that will be administered over three days this week, is the ultimate tool of social advancement in China. It’s the reason why Chinese high schools are glorified test prep institutions. Sun Jia Lu says it’s also behind the nickname teenagers in today’s China have given themselves: The Damaged Generation.

Sun’s still got two years before she takes the gaokao. But for many recent high school graduates in China, this week is the most stressful one of their lives.

Read more about China’s all-important college entrance exam.