How Does China Evaluate and Choose
its Leaders? Understanding China’s University System
By Larry Romanoff, November 23, 2019
Many Westerners have at least a dim awareness of China’s
Gaokao, the system of annual university entrance examinations, taken
by about 10 million students each year. This set of examinations is quite stiff
and perhaps even harsh, covering many subjects and occupying three days. The
tests require broad understanding, deep knowledge and high intelligence, if one
is to do well. These examinations are entirely merit-based and favoritism is
impossible. Students who produce the highest grades in these examinations
are in the top 1% of a pool of 1.5 billion people.
Few Westerners are aware that China also has a system
of bar examinations which every graduate lawyer must pass in order to practice
law in China. These are even more severe, requiring not only high intelligence
but deep knowledge of the laws and a broad understanding of all matters legal,
these exams being so difficult that many refuse to even attempt them. Of about
250,000 graduate lawyers who sit the exam, only about 20,000 will pass and
obtain qualifications to actually practice law in China. If you meet a
Chinese lawyer, you can be assured you are dealing with someone from top 1% of
that same pool of 1.5 billion people.
I mention these two items only to introduce a third –
the Civil Service Examinations.
The Imperial civil service examinations were designed
many centuries ago to select the best administrative officials for the state’s
bureaucracy. They lasted as
long as 72 hours, and required a great depth and breadth of knowledge to pass.
It was an eminently fair system in that the exam itself had no qualifications.
Almost anyone, even from the least educated family in the poorest town, could
sit the exam and, if that person did well enough, he or she could join the
civil service and potentially rise to the top. The modern civil service
examination system evolved from the imperial one, and today millions of
graduates write these each year. They are extremely difficult. Of perhaps two
million candidates only about 10,000 will get a pass. And that pass doesn’t get
you a job; all it gets you is an interview.
When you meet some who has entered the civil service
in China’s central government, you can rest assured you are speaking to a
person who is not only exceptionally well educated and astonishingly
knowledgeable on a broad range of national issues, but is in the top 0.1% of a
pool of 1.5 billion people.
China’s government officials are all highly-educated and trained engineers,
economists, sociologists, scientists, often at a Ph.D. level. We should here
consider that the Chinese generally score about 10% higher on standard IQ tests
than do Caucasian Westerners. When we couple this with the Chinese process of
weeding out all but the top 0.1% from consideration, and add further the
prospect of doing the weeding from a pool of 1.5 billion people, you might
expect the individuals in China’s Central Government to be rather better
qualified than those of most other countries. And they are.
And the examination is only the beginning of 30 to 40
years of an accumulation of the knowledge and experience necessary to become a
member of China’s Central Government, the top 1% of this tiny group then
forming the Politburo and one of these few becoming China’s President. These
people who have passed the civil service examinations and will become the
senior officials and civil servants in China’s national government, have
entered a lifelong career in a formidable meritocracy where promotion and
responsibility can be obtained only by demonstrated ability.
There are some who will tell you that family
connections in China can produce a government job for some favored son, a claim
that may be true for minor positions at a local level, though extremely
difficult beyond that and impossible at the national level. No amount of
connections will move anyone into senior positions or to the top of
decision-making power, those places reserved for persons of deep experience and
proven ability. It is also noteworthy that family wealth and influence plays no
part in these appointments. Of China’s highest ruling body, the 25-member
Politburo, only seven came from any background of wealth or power. The
remainder, including China’s President and Prime Minister, came from
backgrounds that offered no special advantages and rose to the top based on
merit alone.
In contradistinction to the West, China’s system
cannot produce incompetence at the top because in a population of 1.5 billion
people there are too many available candidates with stunningly impressive
credentials, and who are evaluated on the basis of real results rather than
public popularity or TV charisma. These candidates are selected not only on
intelligence and demonstrated proficiency but evaluated on their ability to
unify the various social factions that exist in every nation, and to create a
consensus on a realisable vision for the country. They must further develop an
expansive knowledge and understanding of the economy, of the nation, of foreign
affairs, of China’s society and its problems, and of the best methods for
achieving stability and rapid social and economic progress.
Contrast this with the Western system where
politicians most often have no useful education and no relevant training or
experience, and in fact political leadership of any Western nation has no
credential requirements whatever, certainly not in education, experience or
intelligence.
One of Canada’s recent Prime Ministers, Stephen
Harper, had only a minor undergraduate degree and his only job was working
in a corporate mail room when he joined the rump of a political party, became
the party leader and eventually the Prime Minister. His successor, Justin
Trudeau, was a school teacher whose father had been Canada’s Prime Minister
many years prior, and whose only credential appeared to be a talent for working
the political system. In Canada’s province of Alberta, a recent Premier was a
former television news reporter, renowned more for being an habitual drunk than
for intelligence or governing ability. US President George Bush was renowned
for boasting that he never read any books, being nearly as painfully
unintelligent as Ronald Reagan whose only credential was having been a C-class
movie actor.
None of these men had a CV sufficient to qualify as a
manager of a 7-11 and none demonstrated signs of either intelligence or
governing ability, yet a ludicrous and absurd political system permitted them
to become the CEO of nations and provinces. The disparity between the quality
of elected politicians in Western countries and the analogous officials in
China’s government, especially at the national level in the Central Government,
is a discrepancy so vast that comparisons are largely meaningless. Lee Kuan
Yew, the founding father of Singapore, praised China’s President Xi Jinping
as “a man of great breadth” and put him in “the Nelson Mandela class
of persons”, saying “that man has iron in his soul”, and Xi
has been widely praised (except in the US) as a man who “will become the
first truly global leader”. These are not compliments we see being paid to
Western politicians.
An examination of the backgrounds and credentials of
politicians in any Western nation will reveal mostly a collection of
politically-ambitious misfits strikingly lacking in redeeming qualities. It is
not a surprise that Western politicians are ranked lower than prostitutes,
used-car salesmen and snakes in terms of both morality and trustworthiness. In
one recent US public poll, the politicians of both houses of the entire US
Congress were rated as less popular than cockroaches and lice. (1) It is accepted as a truism that all Western
politicians will, after being elected, freely abandon the commitments made to
the people immediately prior to being elected, political duplicity and
cunning accepted as normal in all Western societies. This is so true that
one US commentator recently remarked that “Of course, all politicians need
to lie, but the Clintons do it with such ease that it’s troubling”.
Such a thing is unheard of in China. Outright lying to the people would be
fatal, but in the West dishonesty in politicians is accepted without a murmur.
There is another factor to consider, that of education
and training. In the West, senior government officials – the politicians – are
seldom renowned for competence and almost never have any useful experience.
Moreover, for these Western politicians who exercise the decision power to
shape a country, not only are there no credential requirements but there is in
fact no governing education or training available. It is all a kind of ‘earn
while you learn’ system. But in China, entry is impossible without extreme
credentials and, once in the system, the education and training are
never-ending.
The World’s Number One University
It is not widely known in China, and not at all in the
West, that hidden in Beijing is the top university in the world, one unlike any
other, and whose qualities in conception and execution put all Western
universities to shame. This University, sometimes called “the most mysterious
school in China”, is the Central Party University, with a slate of both
students and faculty that are an order of magnitude above colleges like Harvard,
Cambridge or the Sorbonne. To say that entrance qualifications are extreme,
would be an understatement. This is not a place like Harvard where a $5
million donation to an endowment fund will obtain admission for your dim-witted
son or daughter.
Originally founded in 1933, the University’s purpose
is to educate and mature those individuals having passed the civil service
examinations and to prepare them both in their career development and in the
responsibilities of governing the world’s most populous nation. It is the
training ground for future leaders of the country, and whose headmaster is
usually the President of China. (3) To date, this university has trained
perhaps 100,000 government leaders and high officials. The school is not
normally open to the general public, but in the past few decades this
university has offered some very high-level postgraduate and doctoral programs
for about 500 non-official students, focusing on philosophy, economics, law,
politics and history.
The 100-hectare leafy campus is extremely quiet and here, unlike all other
universities in China, we see no bicycles but instead the roads outside school
buildings are lined with black Audis. The gates are under armed guard 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, the security necessary for those who study there –
provincial governors and ministers, young and middle-aged officials, their
guest speakers and sometimes the country’s top leaders.
Not only are the admitted students the best and
brightest of the top 0.1%, but the professors and lecturers at this Central
Party University are unique in the world, a far cry from the adjutant part-time lecturers at
most American universities. The professors here are the most competent in the
nation. Guest lecturers sometimes include high-level Chinese officials and, in
important topics of debate, the school has no hesitation in bringing in the
world’s most renowned experts from any country on everything from economics and
international finance to social policy, foreign policy, industrial policy and
even military matters. Further, these guest lecturers are often national
leaders of other countries and other high-level foreign dignitaries, this to
give Chinese officials not only a firm grounding in the knowledge and skills
necessary to govern China, but also a wider horizon and better understanding of
different cultures, values and political systems.
The cornerstone of the school’s educational policy is
that everything is on the table. There are no forbidden topics, and even reactionary, revolutionary or
just plain whacky positions are discussed, analysed and debated to resolution.
All manner of planning, problems, solutions, alternatives, will be discussed,
examined, debated, explained, with any number of prominent experts available as
reference material. When these sessions are completed, all students will have
an MBA-level or better appreciation of the entire subject. And this is only one
subject of many they will encounter.
When you consider that these officials entered the
government with an already high level of education, and with an already
demonstrated broad level of understanding and exceptional intelligence, these
additional layers of training and education cannot help but produce an
impressive level of overall knowledge and ability throughout the government.
Nothing like this system exists in the West, which is why senior civil servants
in most Western countries often look on their politician-leaders with a mixture
of disdain and contempt for their lack of knowledge and ability.
The general process is that at various intervals the
most promising young and middle-aged officials attend this university for up to
a year at a time, to expand their knowledge and understanding of all issues
relating to China and government, usually followed by a promotion. Stints at
the Central Party University will alternate with rotating assignments in all
manner of government Departments at the local, provincial and national levels,
as well as with assignments in various state-owned commercial enterprises. In
most cases, these work and experience assignments are alternated with classroom
time at this university, the students assimilating what they have learned in
their prior assignment and receiving preparation for their next posting.
An individual might potentially rotate through a small
local government, a corporate finance department, work as a local health care
executive or provincial education head, become the mayor of a small city, the
head of another corporate department, the mayor of a larger city, the governor
of a province, a senior executive or CEO of a major state corporation, and so
on, perhaps each time returning to the university for additional education and
training.
At each stage, with each government or corporate
posting, the incumbents are evaluated on a vast array of criteria. Those who
continue to shine will continue to progress to postings of increased vision and
responsibility. Those who appear to have reached their limit will be sidelined.
They won’t be removed or fired, but will be given postings commensurate with
their abilities, above which level they cannot rise. From all this, China
has the only government system in the world that ensures competence at the top.
Consider the mayor of a city in a Western country.
After one term in office, who evaluates this person? The general public, who
have neither the training nor experience to perform such evaluations. The
“public” do not understand the job or its requirements, and haven’t the facts
on which to base an intelligent evaluation, resulting in what becomes
essentially a popularity contest, superficialities being the deciding factors.
In China’s system, this city mayor is evaluated by his seniors, men who were
likely mayors of small and large cities before he was born, men who thoroughly
understand every aspect of his job and who cannot be duped.
Few Westerners have bothered to learn even the simple
basics about the form of China’s government, preferring instead to parrot
foolish nonsense about China being a dictatorship or, as one writer recently
stated, “a deeply tyrannical regime”. It is of course no such thing, the level of Western
ideological blindness and willful ignorance being simply appalling. China has a
one-party government, which Western ideologues denounce as heresy, but which
manifests enormous advantages. With a one-party government, decision-making is
not an unprincipled sport where my team has to win. It is simply a group of
people with various viewpoints working together to obtain a consensus for
policy and action for the overall good of their nation. Here, there is no
forced separation of officials on the basis of political ideology. China’s
entire social spectrum is represented in government in the same way as in
Chinese or any other society. There is no partisan in-fighting. China’s system
looks for consensus whereas Western political systems are based on conflict.
China’s government also has an ‘opposition’, but this
body has two major differences from Western governments. First, it does not
function to ‘oppose’ but rather to consult, charged with the responsibility
to consider not only the government’s directions and policies but also to
devise alternatives and make recommendations. And the government must by law
consider and respond to all these consultations – which it does. Second,
this opposition group is not seen as consisting of the marginalised political
losers as in the Western systems but a second tier of extremely competent
people who were not selected to the top governing positions. And, rather than
lose all this expertise, this secondary group was created to contribute to the
development of their country.
The benefits of this system can be seen in its
results. China has already far surpassed the undeveloped nations that adopted
Western multi-party electoral governments, and certainly has a brighter future
than most of them. Many foreign observers are finally admitting openly that
China’s form of government exhibits signs of superiority over Western systems,
and that it is largely responsible for China’s efficiency, for its rapid
development, and for its speed of response. The “Free World” could learn a
lot from China’s government system. It works, beautifully. It has
transformed the economy and brought hundreds of millions out of poverty. It has
put men into space, built the world’s fastest trains, the longest undersea
tunnels, the world’s longest bridges, the largest dams. It is rapidly creating
the world’s largest genuine middle class. And it’s hardly begun.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more
than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries,
as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a
retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive
positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international
import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan
University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA
classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of
ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the
contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
*
Notes
(2) By Li Jing and Peng Yining (China Daily);
2011-06-01
