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<p>The above is a good example of someone from the US expecting everyone to have the same “rights” while ignoring the political and cultural realities on the ground. Since when did one party authoritarian states grant genuine “rights” to individuals? </p>
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<p>Ironically, the overpopulation problem which prompted the one-child policy in the very end of the '70s/early '80s was rooted in Mao’s policies of encouraging multiple childbirths in the '50s and '60’s to facilitate the export of his “revolution” and to “defend it” against the “Capitalist West”. Something which worked far too well especially considering he took over right after more than a century of a series of colonialist invasive wars(Opium Wars I & II, Sino-Japanese Wars I & II, etc), civil wars(Taiping Rebellion, Warlords era, Chinese Civil War), and revolutions(1911 & 1949). </p>
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<p>Not only that, but that China’s starting from a very low starting point due to cumulative losses/destruction from European/Japanese colonialism/drug pushing from the early-mid 19th century, civil wars, and revolutions before the CCP takeover under Mao in '49. </p>
<p>Then Mao and the CCP added to those woes through such initiatives as the Great Leap Forward and moreso…the Cultural Revolution which effectively set China’s research, education, and cultural institutions by at least a decade…if not more. </p>
<p>The Cultural Revolution’s experiment with “affirmative action policies” for university admission targeting rural peasants and workers with “good political backgrounds” caused so many problems with universities and the state that bringing back* and keeping the ruthlessly competitive gaokao is viewed by many in Chinese academia and the senior CCP leadership since Deng Xiaoping took over as a way to avoid a repeat of having universities overrun by academically un/underprepared students who are going to run riot. </p>
<p>Not to mention the fears by senior CCP leaders and academics that such Cultural Revolution policies are also perceived as having the potential to further lower the academic reputation of Mainland Chinese universities rather than strengthening their reputations to be remotely competitive so their graduates are well regarded by employers and grad schools domestically and internationally…not the politicized laughingstock of the rest of the world.</p>
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<li>Gaokao was done away with during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and reimplemented in the late '70s.</li>
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