In early December 2020, the language magazine Yaowen Jiaozi named its ten buzzwords of the year. Neijuan, involution, was one of them. The historical sociologist Philip Huang had used the word for “growth without development” in the peasant economy.
The dictionary Handian now defines it as excessive competition among peers or individuals for limited resources or opportunities.
In the imperial examinations, the top three candidates of the final palace exam were popularly called zhuangyuan, bangyan and tanhua. Together they were known as the san dingjia, the three legs of the tripod. On the official golden list, the jinbang, the zhuangyuan appeared only as “first place in the first class.”
The first known zhuangyuan was Sun Fujia, in 622.
On June 23, 2021, the Ministry of Education issued guidance on university applications after the gaokao. It says: “Hyping the ‘gaokao zhuangyuan,’ admission rates, high-scoring candidates and repeat candidates is strictly prohibited.” The zhuangyuan is a province’s top scorer, named after the first place of the imperial examinations.
China’s best-known lists of universities are numbers. Project 211, approved by the State Council on November 18, 1995, set out to build about 100 universities for the 21st century. Project 985 goes back to a speech by Jiang Zemin at Peking University’s centenary on May 4, 1998.
According to Xinhua in 2024, many companies ask applicants for their diyi xueli, first degree, and sort it into three tiers: 985, 211 and ordinary universities. A Ministry of Education notice strictly prohibits job postings that limit candidates to 985 or 211 universities.
On November 8, 2013, the Supreme People’s Court published Guiding Case No. 18, ZTE (Hangzhou) v. Wang Peng. The court held: “An employee who ranks in the last tier of an employer’s graded evaluation is not thereby ‘unable to do the job.'” Ranking last does not meet the legal conditions for ending a contract unilaterally, and the employer cannot dismiss the employee on that ground.
Measures issued by nine government departments in 2018 to reduce the burden on schoolchildren say: “Exam results are evaluated by grade levels. Publishing students’ exam scores and rankings in any form or manner is strictly prohibited.”
The Regulations on the Protection of Minors in Schools, announced on June 1, 2021, forbid schools and teachers to make students’ exam scores and rankings public.
Chinese academics call talent titles such as Changjiang Scholar maozi, hats. In 2018, Science and Technology Daily wrote that the worship and abuse of hats in academia had become “very prominent.” It added: “Once one has a hat, it is easy to get more hats and more resources. The winner takes all.”
In October 2020, the Party Central Committee and the State Council published a plan to reform educational evaluation. It calls for overcoming “the stubborn ills of only scores, only admission rates, only diplomas, only papers and only hats.”
Alibaba’s career ladder has a professional track from P5 to P14 and a management track from M1 to M10. According to the business site Jiemian, a P8 earns on average about a million yuan a year in cash and shares, and a P10 ranks roughly as a vice president.
In 2007, the economist Zhou Li-An published “A Study of the Promotion Tournament Model of Chinese Local Officials” in the journal Economic Research. His thesis: “The ‘promotion tournament’ among local officials, centered on GDP growth, is one of the key clues to understanding government incentives and growth.”
鸡娃 Chicken child. To give a child a shot of chicken blood. Parents keep adding study and activities so that the child keeps striving.
别人家的孩子 Other people’s child. The clever child with good grades and good habits whom parents hold up to their own.