Top Chinese diplomat tells US to 'shut up' on arms spending

You are right in that an interviewing system can be a massive bribery haven without the right design. They have the same bribery problem in interviewing government employees in recent years. As a result, multiple vaible measures to plug the holes are now gradually undertaken to increase the difficulty of bribery, such as randomly allocate interviewees as well as interviewers just before an interview, and keeping an interviewee's identity secret. Chinese over 10 millions of small businesses, there are enough owners and human resources manager to be selected for such duty, in a way, like the jury duty system.

I disagree with that the Chinese students can't afford private education, because right now the tuition and miscellaneous fees are every high in the public colleges already. It's different from the USA. Take the Geely university, found by the privately owned Geely corporation, for example, it's found for the general public, not just for the upper class. China's investors have enough money to spend, and its expense isn't necessarily high, it's a matter of policy.

 

I just wanted to point out that "government subsidies," are a big part of getting young people into a position to afford college in the United States. And unlike our public school system, which I would still argue is better than some would believe, but is incredibly uneven in quality, our universities are the envy of the world, and a huge part of the US being as advanced and properous as it is. These subsidies, despite being butchered by the Bush Administration, are in large part subsidized loans (which used to be less prevalent, but with belt tightening by Washington, are a larger part of what's available, compared to the larger percentage of "grants in aid," in the past). The graduates have to pay them back, which can be a burden, but they are able to go to college, which is what we all want, right? China might consider doing more of that kind of aid, if they aren't already.

To tell you the truth, reading your description of the Chinese system for college seemed really confusing and convoluted. China could learn a great deal from the universities in the US, and appears to be doing just that, if one is going by the large number of Chinese students studying here. Of course, that is available to a real limited number of China's students, so China clearly has to work on making their own university system more affordable, more available, and of higher quality. I'm sure that's being worked on, and I wish them luck!

edit: wanted to add that bribery isn't part of our system. Knowing the right people helps a hell of a lot, of course (see George W. Bush), and that isn't to say that some form of bribery might not exist on a small scale, but it's more apt to be a "donation," to a private university, to get a borderline qualified (or unqualified) rich kid into it. That's highly unusual, but it happens. Giving bribes to get a job is something I've never seen, and have never heard much about, at all. It's about who you know, where you went to school, who you worked for during the summers, your major, and things of that nature.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Student loans, I believe, was experimented, but the results were poor. China doesn't have a good credit system like here, default rate on student loans is so high that it doesn't make sense to the creditors, including the government.

College education in China is cheap compared to US. Maybe a couple of grands per year. Still that is too much for too many kids.

Bribery is much more common in China than in US, and you cannot do much about it really because everybody does it over there.

 

Most of the 10 millions small business owners you are talking about don't even have collefe educations, and how are you gonna train them to be qualified interviewers? And how many of them will not take $ under the table? At this moment, I think China is better off with a standard test system, minimizing human factor which only benefit a group of corrupted ones.

I happen know a couple of friends who opened private colleges in China. Believe me, they charge a lot more than public universities. It is solely for profit. BTW, running such private colleges involves bribing government officials too.

 

I agree entirely. I'm speaking from the perspective of India, but there's very little difference between the two countries.

Corruption is such a gigantic issue in both countries, which is why a uniform testing policy remains the only way to filter out qualified applicants while avoiding heavy corruption. I know that in private colleges in India, many times they ask for mandatory "donations" in order to get admitted. An American style admission system is just asking for bribery and cheating. And as you pointed out, not only are you bribing your school, but the school then has to go and bribe the government and so on and so forth.

Admissions based exclusively isn't fair and certainly excludes tons of qualified applicants. Hell I guarantee that if I grew up in Asia, I would be a nobody because I just lack the work ethic and the determination to do well on these exams. I don't know about China, but the entrance exams for schools like the Indian Institute of Technology would make MIT students **** in their pants. A 60% score is considered genius level on those exams and the acceptance rate is just absurd. And a lot of creative and innovative minds probably get screwed routinely because they can't put their knowledge down on several piece of papers on one Sunday. But there really isn't anyway around it.

 

Huh? Interviews are not about testing the depth of knowledge of the interviewees, but their inner qualities. The educational level of entrepreneurs have nothing to do with it. The entrepreneurs or human resources managers have the need to find the right candidate in one interview in order to run a business. The eye for talent is an ability trained by professional need, not by college education.

This is only a technicality that can be easily solved by the arrangements I mentioned above. There will be many groups of interviewers and it's nearly impossible to bribe all of them, also, a student will randomly select an interviewing room just before he/she receives an interview, the marks will be immediately announced after the interview... there's many ways to counter bribery. Bribery is easy to control in a controlled environment. If Bribery is beyond control, then a standard test is not immune to it as well.

That's because there isn't enough of them due to entry barrier. Bribery is needed to give leeway from policy. In a market economy driven education market students will go to the best quality school at the best price. There will be Benz and BMW, there will also be Hyundai. Let competition decides what a school charges and how many students want to enroll. No need to worry about prices being too high under the influence of the invisible hand. It's a matter of the balance between supply and demand.

 

Correction, I did some research and found out China is already allowing private colleges to be found, and these colleges are increasing rapidly in China. It seems China agrees with me.

 

By 1 million small business men, I am sure you included a lot of convenience store owners, restaurant owners, bicycle repair shop owners, etc. I really don't know what they have to be qualified as interviewers.

most of these small business men are in big cities, along the east coast. Students, on the other hand, spread out all over China. It is gonna be very hard to do what you suggested.

I have no idea why you think bribing is hard. If one gets stopped in china for traffic violation, he can bribe his way out of a ticket WITHOUT knowing the cop beforehand. And I can get go to Vegas and pass a $20 bill to hotel front desk waiter and get a free upgrade. I certainly don't know who will be working at the front desk.

I think I told you I know a couple of friends who OWNED private colleges in china. Of course they exist. They are just for the wealthy kids only, at this point.

 

You see, there's over 2 millions medium to small businesses under the category of "company" in China, if I include the convenient store owners, restaurant owners, etc, who mostely operate under the category of "Ge Ti Hu"(roughly translated as individual businesses) , there will be 27 millions of them. That's about 30 millions owners we are talking about, and you can throw several millions of human resource managers into the mix, making the number of skilled worker interviewers even higher. They spread among towns and cities, and villages. Difficulties only exist in some remote and sparsely populated areas, not a major issue IMO.

My point is bribery is hard under a controlled environment with good design. I think if you read the measures I mentioned that already just began to take place in the government job applicants interviews in China, it should be obvious that the cases you mentioned is not comparable. One may bribe one person, but it's hard to bribe say several groups of interviewers, each made of several interviewers. It's not an open day practice! Bribery in China happens typically between connections and familiar figures, it's not like those with power will take money from strangers. This is just one of the real time practices the Chinese government is beginning to take in the government job applicants interviews .

Then maybe your friends happen to be in the private colleges in China that are only for wealthy kids. It's true that private college's tuition is generally higher than that of the public schools because most of them found in recent years with investment still not returned, but by how much? Take a private school the Beijing Geely university for example, it charges about 1000 USD a year for tuition for most of its departments, while a public school may charge around 700-800 USD a year for tuition. It caters to the middle income families, not exactly the rich ones. The Geely university experienced rapid growth and now has 25000 students in just a few years (found in 2002). A hundred millions USD were invested to found this university so it's understandable raising the tuition a little to get back the investment first, besides, it's located in Beijing, a big city where prices for goods are high. Also, one of the main reason that justify its higher tuition is that it guarentees a job after graduation, a rare service that attracts lots of middle income families. Wealthy kids don't care about a job guarentee.

Despite rapid growth of successful private college in recent years, the demand for college education still outrans the supply. It's still a seller's market now. With more growth and participants, tuition will be down when the market moves toward a buyer's market.