The Chinese Nobles Should Say "Hooray" to DR

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The article is written in English. Thanks for reading this tough and rough article, and I am not resigned to the restriction of speaking.

Before I Start

Hi! I am SheepChef, a student.

This year, the year of 2022, is horrible. I’ve experienced the pandemic of COVID-19, and many more terrifying things.

As the title mentioned, I am going to say that we Chinese “nobles” should say “Hooray” to “DR”, but what is “DR” in the first place? Well, it’s a long story ——

What is “DR”?

In a nutshell, “DR” is a Chinese policy that “reduces the burden of the in-school compulsory education and out-school compulsory-education-related extracurricular education for students.” Aka “Double Reduction” which reduces both in-school education and out-school education for students to, as its official claim, “reduce students’ burden”. I will use “DR” in short to prevent my article from being boring.

Like many other Chinese policies, DR doesn’t differ much from them. Thus, I hereby decree that DR is one of the “best”, “greatest”, “perfect”, and “excellent” policies that the CPC has ever conducted.

Maybe you will ask: “Why do you say that DR is good? There is no evidence!” Well, I will tell you the reasons, right now.

Why Does DR Benefit?

Reason No.1 – It is Great for Us Who are Competing with Non-nobles.

As you can see, DR is cutting off out-school education. However, the restriction is relative. Among us nobles, who cares about the restrictions? It’s not a big deal since we have money! We can just randomly employ an out-school teacher who has “artificially” lost his or her job to teach our children privately since the policy only limits the out-school education agencies but not the individuals. Besides, even though the individuals are limited in the future, we can easily “bypass” the limitation by employing a full-time teacher.

Besides, the non-nobles will be weakened in academic competence so that we nobles can have more chances to matriculate at a great university elegantly.

Reason No.2 – It is a Constructive Policy for Solving the Population Problem.

Nowadays, China is facing two serious problems —— population aging and the shortage of labor force.

Before DR is conducted, the Chinese education industry was inclined to achieve a kind of elite education, which means the more effort and money you pay, the more likely you will enter a good university.

After DR is conducted, the national force intervenes in the trend, and it forces many young people to be workers to compensate for the severe lack of cheap labor forces. As I mentioned the word “cheap”, the workers’ circumstances are not quite good, but who cares? Maybe they are predestined.

Reason No.3 – We Nobles can Control more Social Resources than Ever.

China has built the NEMT^[1] system since the late 20th century, which gives a chance for students, whether they are wealthy or not, to enter a university and cross to a higher class of people. However, since the quota is limited, many people are involved in a kind of horrible zero-sum game, aka “involution”. In this circumstance, everyone is competing with each other for obtaining the scarce quota.

Thus, it is evident that those who have more educational resources are more likely to win the game. However, the average economical ability of people in China is increasing in the recent decade, which leads to severer involution.

To “fix” the problem, DR is conducted to reduce people’s educational resources. However, we nobles are not affected. As a saying goes: “Money makes the mare go”, we can and will have the educational resources if we have enough money and a high social position. It is those who are below the middle class that DR affects, but not nobles.

As a result, the mobility of the class of people is decreasing, and we nobles can control more social resources than ever. This is a good thing, isn’t it?

Epilogue: DR and the Reassignment of Educational Resources

Many officials say that DR “reduces the burden of students”, but I don’t know if DR really achieved that. Maybe it has a completely different purpose in the first place.

When we think about the question deeply, we can find that DR is fundamentally a kind of reassignment of educational resources, which is evidently beneficial to elites and nobles since they have both economical and social advantages.

When we observe the big picture from the view of students in low class, things are much different. They lack money, they lack educational resources to gain enough competence to compete with the elites. Apparently, they are more likely to fail the exam and less likely to win the NEMT.

Usually, the officials will promote the spreading of the thought that “No pain, no gain.” Nevertheless, the reality is that, in a huge number of cases, there is even no gain for those who suffered a lot. Thus it can be seen that a terrible survivor bias has already been planted in everyone’s mind that what people see is always those who studied hard and entered a good university, so they believe that they can do the same, however, they ignored the fact that a vast majority of people is failed to achieve their dream of entering a good university, even if they have studied hard, and those who actually entered a good university is mostly the social elites.

In the end, is DR good?

Hopefully, the answer is in your heart.