National Examination System and Social Stratification in China
中国国家科举制度与社会分层
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She currently works as a Research Assistant at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences. Her primary research interests include Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), higher education policy, comparative education, and innovative curriculum and instruction. She previously served as a Project Assistant at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), contributing to international policy analysis and report drafting.
Ms. Yu has published academic papers in various domestic and international journals on topics such as AI and academic ethics, East Asian education comparison, and drama education.
She also serves as an editorial board member for the journal Education Insights. With an interdisciplinary research background and an international perspective, she is dedicated to exploring educational innovation and social governance in the digital era.
This book addresses the pervasive phenomenon of “Educational Involution” (Neijuan) within China’s education system, characterized by intense competition where increased effort yields diminishing returns in genuine progress. This dynamic is driven by deep-seated social, economic, and cultural pressures, exacerbating issues like student stress, graduate unemployment, and educational inequality. Against this backdrop, the work investigates the critical relationship between China’s national examination system—a pivotal mechanism for social selection—and the country’s evolving social stratification. The research aims to dissect this complex interplay to propose solutions conducive to a more fair and reasonable education system, aligned with the socialist objective of enhancing people’s happiness.
The book is structured around three core analytical directions:
First, it establishes a dialectical analysis between the national exam system and social stratification, employing Bourdieu’s Theory of Cultural Capital as a primary framework to examine issues like test-centric education and unequal resource distribution.
Second, it utilizes a phenomenological research paradigm to analyze concrete social problems emerging from China’s economic transition, such as academic pressure on youth and employment challenges for graduates, while constructing a theoretical model suited to China’s national conditions.
Third, it adopts the People’s Happiness Index, aligned with the Communist Party of China’s concept of people’s happiness, as an interpretive model to evaluate educational outcomes and propose improvements.
The methodology combines qualitative analysis of digital text data with case studies, rigorously sourcing information from official Chinese statistics and public online platforms.
The work makes two significant contributions. Theoretically, it advances the application of the theoretical system of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in academic research. By integrating this framework and the concept of people’s happiness into its analysis, it challenges the marginalization of the Chinese discourse in international academia and demonstrates its viability for solving complex social issues.
Methodologically, it pioneers an innovative research paradigm in educational phenomenology. It leverages AI-assisted tools to ethically mine and analyze real-world textual data from dynamic and often biased digital platforms, offering a novel fusion of traditional qualitative research with digital-age data collection techniques for more grounded social science inquiry.
