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The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China
Combining personal narratives with decades of research, a vivid account of how the gaokao—China’s high-stakes college admissions test—shapes that society and influences education debates in the United States.
Each year, more than ten million students across China pin their hopes on the gaokao, the nationwide college entrance exam. Unlike in the United States, where standardized tests are just one factor, in China college admission is determined entirely by gaokao performance. It is no wonder the test has become a national obsession.
Drawing on extensive surveys, historical research, and economic analysis, and informed by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li’s own experiences of the gaokao gauntlet, The Highest Exam reveals how China’s education system functions as a centralized tournament. It explains why preparation for the gaokao begins even before first grade—and why, given its importance for upward mobility, Chinese families are behaving rationally when they devote immense quantities of money and effort to acing the test. It shows how the exam system serves the needs of the Chinese Communist Party and drives much of the country’s economic growth. And it examines the gaokao’s far-reaching effects on China’s society, as the exam’s promise of meritocracy encourages citizens to focus on individual ability at the expense of considering socioeconomic inequalities.
What’s more, as the book makes clear, the gaokao is now also shaping debates around education in the United States. As Chinese-American families bring the expectations of the highest exam with them, their calls for objective, transparent metrics in the education system increasingly clash with the more holistic measures of achievement used by American schools and universities.
Each year, more than ten million students across China pin their hopes on the gaokao, the nationwide college entrance exam. Unlike in the United States, where standardized tests are just one factor, in China college admission is determined entirely by gaokao performance. It is no wonder the test has become a national obsession.
Drawing on extensive surveys, historical research, and economic analysis, and informed by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li’s own experiences of the gaokao gauntlet, The Highest Exam reveals how China’s education system functions as a centralized tournament. It explains why preparation for the gaokao begins even before first grade—and why, given its importance for upward mobility, Chinese families are behaving rationally when they devote immense quantities of money and effort to acing the test. It shows how the exam system serves the needs of the Chinese Communist Party and drives much of the country’s economic growth. And it examines the gaokao’s far-reaching effects on China’s society, as the exam’s promise of meritocracy encourages citizens to focus on individual ability at the expense of considering socioeconomic inequalities.
What’s more, as the book makes clear, the gaokao is now also shaping debates around education in the United States. As Chinese-American families bring the expectations of the highest exam with them, their calls for objective, transparent metrics in the education system increasingly clash with the more holistic measures of achievement used by American schools and universities.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published September 9, 2025
72 people are currently reading
1385 people want to read
About the author
Ruixue Jia
2 books11 followersprofessor of economics at UC San Digo, researching at the intersection of economics, history, and politics. personal website: https://www.ruixuejia.com/
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
January 25, 2026
Книгата потвърди много от онова, което вече знаех за образователната система на Китай, но също така ми даде необходимите детайли, за да завърша цялостната картина.
Боже, радвам се, че не съм родена там.
Боже, радвам се, че не съм родена там.
September 19, 2025
I took the gaokao in 2000, almost the same year as the book’s author, Jia Ruixue. Reading this book instantly transported me back to that familiar era, where so many of the details resonated deeply.
From elementary school onward, we were instilled with a singular belief: those three sweltering days in July of senior year would mark the turning point of our destiny. The combined score of four subjects was the number that would determine our future path. The slogans we grew up with—“Knowledge changes fate,” “One exam decides it all”—echoed endlessly in our ears. At the same time, we were told another truth: exam-oriented education turns us into screws on an assembly line, lacking creativity and independent thought, and this was why China lagged behind other countries. Thus, as we grew up, we were taught to follow the rules while also being urged to break free of them.
Reforms in education came wave after wave, as if to resolve this paradox. But more than twenty years later, now that our own children are in school, we who once grew up under the call for “quality education” still push them into one centralized hierarchical tournament after another. To lose at the starting line is to lose for life—this is the short-sighted yet inescapable logic we live by. What I cannot understand is why, though we remember so clearly the harm it caused us, we still cannot stop ourselves from forcing our children down the same path.
Perhaps The Highest Exam holds some of the answers. The authors, beginning from their own gaokao experiences, lead us back through that journey: the tense atmosphere of the exam hall, the overwhelming grip of the system, the weight of fate pressing down. They write not only as participants but also as scholars, analyzing with clarity what the gaokao truly represents.
The gaokao is not merely a tool for individual advancement; it is a mirror of the system. It reflects the logic of governance, the dynamics of social mobility and stratification, and the mechanisms of value distribution. The gaokao stands in direct lineage with the imperial civil service examinations: both relied on standardized tests, both promoted the rhetoric of “fair competition,” both functioned as mechanisms for selecting and placing elites, and both operated within the tension between fairness and efficiency. In other words, the gaokao is not a modern invention but a continuation of Chinese history. Just as the imperial exams shaped the bureaucracy of dynastic China, the gaokao today shapes talent flow, social structure, and values.
Drawing on decades of research, the authors explain with rich data and grounded theory:
The paradox of fairness and inequality: The gaokao is hailed as the fairest competition, yet urban–rural, regional, and family background disparities undermine that promise.
The limits of social mobility: Once a ladder for poor students, the gaokao increasingly reinforces existing hierarchies as educational resources diverge.
A reflection of governance logic: More than an educational system, the gaokao is a key tool of population management and opportunity distribution, reflecting the logic of centralization and control.
The dilemmas of reform: Despite new ideas like holistic education, comprehensive evaluation, or the “Strong Foundation Plan,” the exam’s core function—selection and ranking—remains unchanged.
The book also explores the gaokao’s global imprint. Many Chinese families emigrated to the U.S. precisely to escape the tyranny of exam scores. Yet in the American context, where college admissions value holistic qualities and diversity, these families often feel out of place. Ironically, many of them long for a gaokao-like standard—transparent, measurable, objective—as a way to secure their children’s academic excellence. This “gaokao mindset” not only shapes immigrant families’ educational choices but also impacts American society and institutions.
The Highest Exam is far more than a memoir about an exam. It is a study of institutions, culture, and society. It shows how the gaokao is woven into Chinese memories of growing up, family decision-making, and the functioning of society—and how it extends beyond borders, carried into the educational practices of overseas Chinese.
The sense of fate surrounding the gaokao still hangs over multiple generations, and likely will continue, because it is not just about education—it is about the broader functioning of state and society.
I strongly recommend this book. Whether you once took the gaokao yourself, are now guiding your child through the educational contest, or are a researcher interested in Chinese society and its global impact, this book will offer insight and resonance. It compels us to re-examine the gaokao—not just as an individual’s greatest test, but as the nation’s highest exam, and even as a transnational educational culture.
From elementary school onward, we were instilled with a singular belief: those three sweltering days in July of senior year would mark the turning point of our destiny. The combined score of four subjects was the number that would determine our future path. The slogans we grew up with—“Knowledge changes fate,” “One exam decides it all”—echoed endlessly in our ears. At the same time, we were told another truth: exam-oriented education turns us into screws on an assembly line, lacking creativity and independent thought, and this was why China lagged behind other countries. Thus, as we grew up, we were taught to follow the rules while also being urged to break free of them.
Reforms in education came wave after wave, as if to resolve this paradox. But more than twenty years later, now that our own children are in school, we who once grew up under the call for “quality education” still push them into one centralized hierarchical tournament after another. To lose at the starting line is to lose for life—this is the short-sighted yet inescapable logic we live by. What I cannot understand is why, though we remember so clearly the harm it caused us, we still cannot stop ourselves from forcing our children down the same path.
Perhaps The Highest Exam holds some of the answers. The authors, beginning from their own gaokao experiences, lead us back through that journey: the tense atmosphere of the exam hall, the overwhelming grip of the system, the weight of fate pressing down. They write not only as participants but also as scholars, analyzing with clarity what the gaokao truly represents.
The gaokao is not merely a tool for individual advancement; it is a mirror of the system. It reflects the logic of governance, the dynamics of social mobility and stratification, and the mechanisms of value distribution. The gaokao stands in direct lineage with the imperial civil service examinations: both relied on standardized tests, both promoted the rhetoric of “fair competition,” both functioned as mechanisms for selecting and placing elites, and both operated within the tension between fairness and efficiency. In other words, the gaokao is not a modern invention but a continuation of Chinese history. Just as the imperial exams shaped the bureaucracy of dynastic China, the gaokao today shapes talent flow, social structure, and values.
Drawing on decades of research, the authors explain with rich data and grounded theory:
The paradox of fairness and inequality: The gaokao is hailed as the fairest competition, yet urban–rural, regional, and family background disparities undermine that promise.
The limits of social mobility: Once a ladder for poor students, the gaokao increasingly reinforces existing hierarchies as educational resources diverge.
A reflection of governance logic: More than an educational system, the gaokao is a key tool of population management and opportunity distribution, reflecting the logic of centralization and control.
The dilemmas of reform: Despite new ideas like holistic education, comprehensive evaluation, or the “Strong Foundation Plan,” the exam’s core function—selection and ranking—remains unchanged.
The book also explores the gaokao’s global imprint. Many Chinese families emigrated to the U.S. precisely to escape the tyranny of exam scores. Yet in the American context, where college admissions value holistic qualities and diversity, these families often feel out of place. Ironically, many of them long for a gaokao-like standard—transparent, measurable, objective—as a way to secure their children’s academic excellence. This “gaokao mindset” not only shapes immigrant families’ educational choices but also impacts American society and institutions.
The Highest Exam is far more than a memoir about an exam. It is a study of institutions, culture, and society. It shows how the gaokao is woven into Chinese memories of growing up, family decision-making, and the functioning of society—and how it extends beyond borders, carried into the educational practices of overseas Chinese.
The sense of fate surrounding the gaokao still hangs over multiple generations, and likely will continue, because it is not just about education—it is about the broader functioning of state and society.
I strongly recommend this book. Whether you once took the gaokao yourself, are now guiding your child through the educational contest, or are a researcher interested in Chinese society and its global impact, this book will offer insight and resonance. It compels us to re-examine the gaokao—not just as an individual’s greatest test, but as the nation’s highest exam, and even as a transnational educational culture.
February 6, 2026
The topic is genuinely interesting, and the authors make several solid points. BUT, the book feels overly repetitive, with the same ideas restated again and again rather than developed through new examples or personal anecdotes. Because of this, the book felt much longer than it needed to be. Even as a fast reader, I found it slow and frustrating to get through.
October 28, 2025
helped me understand many things and also was a massive inspiration for grindmaxxing and hustlemaxxing.
if dem chinese teens can do it, why cant i in life?
if dem chinese teens can do it, why cant i in life?
April 28, 2026
I sort of got the general idea of the gaokao/its role in society/how it shapes a person via my extended family and by consuming chinese social media, but this book sort of formalized it. it’s interesting that it was sort of an “equalizer” in the past half century but has sort of lost that role today as more and more people acquire the resources and motivation to gamify it
April 18, 2026
China is a society in rapid, relentless transformation.
The authors, political economists Hongbin Li and Ruixue Jia, argue that one of China's "foundational pillars" and enduring institutions, the gaokao, the national college entrance examination, be maintained as the central mechanism through which the Chinese state recruits talent, manages social mobility, and maintains political control. Drawing on two decades of research, including data from the Tsinghua Data Center’s Chinese College Student Survey (2009–2016), the authors make a compelling, if occasionally repetitive, case that the gaokao is the keystone of Chinese civilization.
A Tournament a Thousand Years in the Making
The examination system traces its origins to the Sui dynasty around 600 CE, when China introduced a merit-based exam to select bureaucrats, requiring candidates to memorize ancient texts with only a 0.27 percent chance of passing. For over a millennium, this system created the perception of social mobility, a perception so powerful that many historians believe the abolition of the imperial exam contributed directly to the fall of the Qing dynasty. The People’s Republic revived the principle under Mao to identify promising talent for governance, though Mao himself later suspended it after elite intellectuals turned critical. Deng Xiaoping reinstated the gaokao, and today roughly ten million students sit for it annually, competing for the five percent of seats at elite institutions that offer significantly higher lifetime earnings. A college degree in China correlates with a 40 percent income premium, with elite colleges adding another 40 percent on top of that.
A Cleverly Designed Political Architecture
The book’s most persuasive contribution is its analysis of the gaokao as a political instrument. The central government controls both the number of available positions in the education system and the power assigned to those positions according to rank. University administrators hold CCP bureaucratic rankings equivalent to vice ministers or county mayors, and 64 percent of college graduates report that their top employment preference is a government job, with elite college attendance boosting the odds of state-sector employment by 33 percent. The system, the authors argue, excels at producing loyal, competent elites who owe their status to the ruler.
The regional quota system further serves political ends: Fudan University admits 53% of its students from Shanghai, with less than 2 percent of China’s population. Provinces with large ethnic minority populations receive elevated quotas. Any proposed reform, even reallocating 6.5 percent of seats toward poorer provinces, triggers fierce protests, remarkable in a country that does not permit them. The exam survives, the authors conclude, because it provides just enough hope of social mobility to maintain stability, while keeping families too consumed with competition to pursue alternatives.
Human Capital and the STEM Pivot
Li and Jia are particularly strong on the relationship between education and economic power. China now produces roughly one in five of the world’s college graduates. The government has massively expanded STEM enrollment at elite universities in direct response to US-China technology competition, creating a university-to-industry pipeline that no market economy can replicate at such speed and scale. While the US STEM student pool roughly doubled between 2009 and 2021 — an increase of about 300,000 students — China’s grew by approximately 2.5 million. One-third of China’s extraordinary 10 percent annual GDP growth during the reform era is attributable to rising human capital; the other two-thirds came from policies that used that capital more efficiently.
The authors are honest, however, about the limits of this model. Chinese students' skills stagnate and even decline in university. The highest-scoring graduates overwhelmingly prefer state-sector employment, potentially draining the private sector that is responsible for most genuine innovation. And “China’s Einsteins” (intellectually unconventional students) are systematically disadvantaged by a system that rewards rote performance over curiosity.
Debunking the rise of Chinese universities
The global higher education media is constantly extolling Chinese universities' rise in the rankings. I keep pointing out that the Chinese game the rankings through internal and self-citations, publication volume and PPP-adjusted spending, rather than global scientific impact or breakthrough innovation. It is an open secret that Chinese academics gamed these metrics by building large labs, hiring armies of Ph.D. students, and instructing them to publish quickly and cross-cite.
As two leading scientists at Tsinghua and Peking University wrote in Science, in China “doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats.” The system excels at producing measurable output — that is not the same as leading at the global innovation frontier, a distinction the authors could press harder.
The Highest Exam is a genuinely illuminating work. The authors bring personal authority — both are products of the system, and one co-authored the gaokao reform proposal that was ultimately shelved for fear of destabilizing rural populations. The book is at its best when it reads as a mirror: the gaokao and the political tournament that governs officials’ promotion on a single GDP-growth metric are structurally identical. Both reward measurable performance, suppress heterodox thinking, and concentrate loyalty upward. China is simultaneously facing severe demographic decline, a debt and real estate crisis, capital flight, and stagnating productivity, structural constraints that no examination system, however cleverly designed, can test its way out of. For readers seeking to understand why China behaves as it does on the world stage, this book offers an unusually clear lens.
Highly recommended, with patience for the repetition and errors in grammar and punctuation.
The authors, political economists Hongbin Li and Ruixue Jia, argue that one of China's "foundational pillars" and enduring institutions, the gaokao, the national college entrance examination, be maintained as the central mechanism through which the Chinese state recruits talent, manages social mobility, and maintains political control. Drawing on two decades of research, including data from the Tsinghua Data Center’s Chinese College Student Survey (2009–2016), the authors make a compelling, if occasionally repetitive, case that the gaokao is the keystone of Chinese civilization.
A Tournament a Thousand Years in the Making
The examination system traces its origins to the Sui dynasty around 600 CE, when China introduced a merit-based exam to select bureaucrats, requiring candidates to memorize ancient texts with only a 0.27 percent chance of passing. For over a millennium, this system created the perception of social mobility, a perception so powerful that many historians believe the abolition of the imperial exam contributed directly to the fall of the Qing dynasty. The People’s Republic revived the principle under Mao to identify promising talent for governance, though Mao himself later suspended it after elite intellectuals turned critical. Deng Xiaoping reinstated the gaokao, and today roughly ten million students sit for it annually, competing for the five percent of seats at elite institutions that offer significantly higher lifetime earnings. A college degree in China correlates with a 40 percent income premium, with elite colleges adding another 40 percent on top of that.
A Cleverly Designed Political Architecture
The book’s most persuasive contribution is its analysis of the gaokao as a political instrument. The central government controls both the number of available positions in the education system and the power assigned to those positions according to rank. University administrators hold CCP bureaucratic rankings equivalent to vice ministers or county mayors, and 64 percent of college graduates report that their top employment preference is a government job, with elite college attendance boosting the odds of state-sector employment by 33 percent. The system, the authors argue, excels at producing loyal, competent elites who owe their status to the ruler.
The regional quota system further serves political ends: Fudan University admits 53% of its students from Shanghai, with less than 2 percent of China’s population. Provinces with large ethnic minority populations receive elevated quotas. Any proposed reform, even reallocating 6.5 percent of seats toward poorer provinces, triggers fierce protests, remarkable in a country that does not permit them. The exam survives, the authors conclude, because it provides just enough hope of social mobility to maintain stability, while keeping families too consumed with competition to pursue alternatives.
Human Capital and the STEM Pivot
Li and Jia are particularly strong on the relationship between education and economic power. China now produces roughly one in five of the world’s college graduates. The government has massively expanded STEM enrollment at elite universities in direct response to US-China technology competition, creating a university-to-industry pipeline that no market economy can replicate at such speed and scale. While the US STEM student pool roughly doubled between 2009 and 2021 — an increase of about 300,000 students — China’s grew by approximately 2.5 million. One-third of China’s extraordinary 10 percent annual GDP growth during the reform era is attributable to rising human capital; the other two-thirds came from policies that used that capital more efficiently.
The authors are honest, however, about the limits of this model. Chinese students' skills stagnate and even decline in university. The highest-scoring graduates overwhelmingly prefer state-sector employment, potentially draining the private sector that is responsible for most genuine innovation. And “China’s Einsteins” (intellectually unconventional students) are systematically disadvantaged by a system that rewards rote performance over curiosity.
Debunking the rise of Chinese universities
The global higher education media is constantly extolling Chinese universities' rise in the rankings. I keep pointing out that the Chinese game the rankings through internal and self-citations, publication volume and PPP-adjusted spending, rather than global scientific impact or breakthrough innovation. It is an open secret that Chinese academics gamed these metrics by building large labs, hiring armies of Ph.D. students, and instructing them to publish quickly and cross-cite.
As two leading scientists at Tsinghua and Peking University wrote in Science, in China “doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats.” The system excels at producing measurable output — that is not the same as leading at the global innovation frontier, a distinction the authors could press harder.
The Highest Exam is a genuinely illuminating work. The authors bring personal authority — both are products of the system, and one co-authored the gaokao reform proposal that was ultimately shelved for fear of destabilizing rural populations. The book is at its best when it reads as a mirror: the gaokao and the political tournament that governs officials’ promotion on a single GDP-growth metric are structurally identical. Both reward measurable performance, suppress heterodox thinking, and concentrate loyalty upward. China is simultaneously facing severe demographic decline, a debt and real estate crisis, capital flight, and stagnating productivity, structural constraints that no examination system, however cleverly designed, can test its way out of. For readers seeking to understand why China behaves as it does on the world stage, this book offers an unusually clear lens.
Highly recommended, with patience for the repetition and errors in grammar and punctuation.
Read
September 7, 2025Parents in China often start thinking about college admissions long before their children enter first grade. They might stretch the family finances to buy an apartment in a well-ranked school district so they can send their offspring to one of the area’s best primary schools. A good elementary education, they believe, will prepare students for the middle-school entrance exams; the right middle school, in turn, will increase their chances of testing into an elite high school. In high school, students will spend four years intensely focused on a single endpoint: the two-day college-entrance exam known as the gaokao. A student’s score on that test is the only factor that matters in university admissions. Everything parents do and sacrifice is in service of success on the gaokao.
Read my full review at the Wall Street Journal.
Read my full review at the Wall Street Journal.
December 28, 2025
I picked this one from The Economist top books of 2025 and it was available on Libby. I'm interested in reading about life in China. Short read over the holidays. Spoilers below:
The beginning of this book - where they profiled the 2 authors rise from factory towns and rural areas to ultimately the U.S. on the basis of an exam score was interesting as it profiled their life in China. Most of the book however was explanatory and not how day to day life for kids revolves around this exam prep. The parallels between the objectivity of an exam, how the gov't and factories are run and how the Asian families in Palo Alto U.S. are pushing for more objectivity in the U.S. It was also interesting how the author's child was doing math in 6th grade in the U.S. that they did in 3rd grade in China but the author still would prefer secondary U.S. school due to the teaching of critical thinking vs more memorization. In any event, only 3 stars based on my enjoyment level, I did learn more about society in China.
The beginning of this book - where they profiled the 2 authors rise from factory towns and rural areas to ultimately the U.S. on the basis of an exam score was interesting as it profiled their life in China. Most of the book however was explanatory and not how day to day life for kids revolves around this exam prep. The parallels between the objectivity of an exam, how the gov't and factories are run and how the Asian families in Palo Alto U.S. are pushing for more objectivity in the U.S. It was also interesting how the author's child was doing math in 6th grade in the U.S. that they did in 3rd grade in China but the author still would prefer secondary U.S. school due to the teaching of critical thinking vs more memorization. In any event, only 3 stars based on my enjoyment level, I did learn more about society in China.
Read
February 13, 2026I’m conflicted… often I felt the authors didn’t ground their arguments in enough evidence, but then again, it’s a book meant for general audiences. I don’t know! It was worth the read! But I can’t give it a star rating!
March 27, 2026
Super helpful aid in understanding the future of American higher education and the root of many affirmative action debates.
January 24, 2026
Even though I’ve worked in education for the larger part of a decade, I didn’t know much about the Chinese education system. I appreciate the data-informed approach this book took to describing the gaokao and overall system, but ultimately I am a sucker for anecdotes and felt like more individual stories could have made this book more colorful and compelling. Unfortunately, some of the topics I was most interested in (how does the gaokao as the main measure of educational success affect the development- or lack thereof- of durable skills?) were only briefly mentioned.
My main gripe with this book, though, is definitely the writing. It is deceptively difficult to write an engaging nonfiction page turner, and this very much felt like a book written by two lifelong academics. There was a lot of “and in this chapter we will” and “to summarize that main point,” as well as SO much repetition of the main points, even within the same chapter (yes, repetition is a literary device to ensure understanding, but trust me when I say they went overboard).
I appreciated the content of this book, and I think the overall argument they made as a result of their lifelong research was well founded.
My main gripe with this book, though, is definitely the writing. It is deceptively difficult to write an engaging nonfiction page turner, and this very much felt like a book written by two lifelong academics. There was a lot of “and in this chapter we will” and “to summarize that main point,” as well as SO much repetition of the main points, even within the same chapter (yes, repetition is a literary device to ensure understanding, but trust me when I say they went overboard).
I appreciated the content of this book, and I think the overall argument they made as a result of their lifelong research was well founded.
September 9, 2025
“The Highest Exam” is a thought‑provoking, data‑driven study of China’s Gaokao system that also resonates with countless families whose futures hinge on a single score.
(1) A Beginning Tale
To appreciate the subject’s importance, I begin with a real‑life story from the book — one that could as easily anchor a motivational speech as inspire a Cannes‑bound film.
Picture yourself pondering the year 1984 in the West: it may evoke pessimism in George Orwell’s classic, or optimism in Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl commercial. That ambivalent mood finds its echo in a story unfolding in China that same year, not long after the One‑Child Policy and the reinstated Gaokao of the late 1970s.
That year, a baby girl — call her “Little J” — unwanted by her birth parents, is adopted by a family in a poor rural village in Confucius’s home province, where proximity is more than geography: education honors the sage. In childhood, the dreamer girl has talent and grit in abundance; the opportunity ladder, however, is missing too many rungs. Tuition comes from her own child labor. Books are dusty. Schools are distant. Tutoring is nonexistent.
By the typical script, Little J might remain in the village, marry early through family arrangements, or head to a sweatshop factory in a coastal city. But sometimes, as the saying goes, “when nothing goes right, go left.” A narrow bridge then opens: the Gaokao, China’s “highest exam.” Unlike the holistic U.S. system of extracurriculars, essays, or legacy preferences — often out of reach for a village girl — admission in China is largely determined by a single score. If she outperforms millions of fellow test‑takers, she can earn admission to an elite university — and step onto a different path.
Can Little J earn a medal in this half‑marathon stage of life?
(2) The Central Thesis
The book’s central thesis is that China’s K–12 education functions as a centralized, hierarchical tournament whose endgame is a podium finish at Gaokao. Preparation is not a final‑stage sprint but a decade‑long Tour de France that shapes children’s time and family investment. The authors frame three rational actors: Family (invests early from pre‑K and heavily in location and tutoring choices, in response to lifelong high monetary and nonpecuniary returns to elite colleges), State (sets national rules and provincial quotas to ensure political legitimacy, targeted ideology and human‑capital formation, perceived fairness, and mobility), and Society (a meritocracy‑driven hierarchical tournament on steroids, that prizes a single metric amid weak institutions). In economic and political‑theory terms, a rational‑expectations equilibrium arises from a dynamic game: the State is the Stackelberg first‑mover anticipating family responses and societal demand; Family and Society follow. The result is a coherent framework for how one exam organizes opportunity.
(3) Value Judgment?
On balance, the system has real strengths: a transparent, one‑score gateway can serve as a commitment device to curb weak institutions and expand mobility for students from modest backgrounds. The costs are equally real: procedural fairness can mask ex ante inequality by socioeconomic origin, and a single metric can narrow the definition of talent and creativity. What are the “right” social weights on these competing aims, especially under weak institutions and persistent economic inequality?
The authors are careful to neither romanticize nor demonize the system, and they offer no final verdict — only prudent advice on improving the distribution and focus of pre‑college education. Nonetheless, a hint toward an answer — whether poster child or black swan — may lie in Little J’s journey, to which we turn next.
(4) The Tale Continued
The book recounts how, in 2000, at sixteen, Little J excels in the Gaokao and wins admission to an elite university in Beijing. The “small‑town swot” girl boards a train for the first time. For many urban peers, it is unremarkable; for her, an Apollo moonshot. Years later, trains become planes. Beijing becomes Stockholm and California; perhaps one day the sky’s the limit. The adopted village daughter becomes a leading scholar — one who knows the field well enough to co‑author a book about the very exam that once changed her life.
(5) The Sequel?
Every good story invites a sequel. As a thought‑provoking book, it raises as many questions as it answers. What is distinctive about the Gaokao compared with other national college entrance exams in South Korea, Turkey, or Vietnam? Could the apparent unequal allocation of provincial quotas reflect unobserved demand from the universities themselves? Could “centralization” be a red herring for a deeper cause — doesn't a “hierarchical tournament” yield “involution” everywhere, centralized or not? The list goes on.
(6) Verdict
“The Highest Exam” is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally moving. It explains China as it is lived daily: at the kitchen table, in office buildings, and in the quiet, sleepless night before a summer exam that can reshape a destiny. If you want to understand how one exam can organize family life, reflect and reinforce societal values, signal state priorities, and still leave room for upward mobility, this book shows both the body and the soul.
(1) A Beginning Tale
To appreciate the subject’s importance, I begin with a real‑life story from the book — one that could as easily anchor a motivational speech as inspire a Cannes‑bound film.
Picture yourself pondering the year 1984 in the West: it may evoke pessimism in George Orwell’s classic, or optimism in Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl commercial. That ambivalent mood finds its echo in a story unfolding in China that same year, not long after the One‑Child Policy and the reinstated Gaokao of the late 1970s.
That year, a baby girl — call her “Little J” — unwanted by her birth parents, is adopted by a family in a poor rural village in Confucius’s home province, where proximity is more than geography: education honors the sage. In childhood, the dreamer girl has talent and grit in abundance; the opportunity ladder, however, is missing too many rungs. Tuition comes from her own child labor. Books are dusty. Schools are distant. Tutoring is nonexistent.
By the typical script, Little J might remain in the village, marry early through family arrangements, or head to a sweatshop factory in a coastal city. But sometimes, as the saying goes, “when nothing goes right, go left.” A narrow bridge then opens: the Gaokao, China’s “highest exam.” Unlike the holistic U.S. system of extracurriculars, essays, or legacy preferences — often out of reach for a village girl — admission in China is largely determined by a single score. If she outperforms millions of fellow test‑takers, she can earn admission to an elite university — and step onto a different path.
Can Little J earn a medal in this half‑marathon stage of life?
(2) The Central Thesis
The book’s central thesis is that China’s K–12 education functions as a centralized, hierarchical tournament whose endgame is a podium finish at Gaokao. Preparation is not a final‑stage sprint but a decade‑long Tour de France that shapes children’s time and family investment. The authors frame three rational actors: Family (invests early from pre‑K and heavily in location and tutoring choices, in response to lifelong high monetary and nonpecuniary returns to elite colleges), State (sets national rules and provincial quotas to ensure political legitimacy, targeted ideology and human‑capital formation, perceived fairness, and mobility), and Society (a meritocracy‑driven hierarchical tournament on steroids, that prizes a single metric amid weak institutions). In economic and political‑theory terms, a rational‑expectations equilibrium arises from a dynamic game: the State is the Stackelberg first‑mover anticipating family responses and societal demand; Family and Society follow. The result is a coherent framework for how one exam organizes opportunity.
(3) Value Judgment?
On balance, the system has real strengths: a transparent, one‑score gateway can serve as a commitment device to curb weak institutions and expand mobility for students from modest backgrounds. The costs are equally real: procedural fairness can mask ex ante inequality by socioeconomic origin, and a single metric can narrow the definition of talent and creativity. What are the “right” social weights on these competing aims, especially under weak institutions and persistent economic inequality?
The authors are careful to neither romanticize nor demonize the system, and they offer no final verdict — only prudent advice on improving the distribution and focus of pre‑college education. Nonetheless, a hint toward an answer — whether poster child or black swan — may lie in Little J’s journey, to which we turn next.
(4) The Tale Continued
The book recounts how, in 2000, at sixteen, Little J excels in the Gaokao and wins admission to an elite university in Beijing. The “small‑town swot” girl boards a train for the first time. For many urban peers, it is unremarkable; for her, an Apollo moonshot. Years later, trains become planes. Beijing becomes Stockholm and California; perhaps one day the sky’s the limit. The adopted village daughter becomes a leading scholar — one who knows the field well enough to co‑author a book about the very exam that once changed her life.
(5) The Sequel?
Every good story invites a sequel. As a thought‑provoking book, it raises as many questions as it answers. What is distinctive about the Gaokao compared with other national college entrance exams in South Korea, Turkey, or Vietnam? Could the apparent unequal allocation of provincial quotas reflect unobserved demand from the universities themselves? Could “centralization” be a red herring for a deeper cause — doesn't a “hierarchical tournament” yield “involution” everywhere, centralized or not? The list goes on.
(6) Verdict
“The Highest Exam” is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally moving. It explains China as it is lived daily: at the kitchen table, in office buildings, and in the quiet, sleepless night before a summer exam that can reshape a destiny. If you want to understand how one exam can organize family life, reflect and reinforce societal values, signal state priorities, and still leave room for upward mobility, this book shows both the body and the soul.
January 9, 2026
3.5 / 5 - informative view of China’s education system and the parallels between the centralised hierarchical nature of the Gaokao and other aspects of Chinese society.
I do find that the authors tend to belabour some of the points and the writing can be slightly confusing.
Otherwise, it’s a relatively interesting book!
I do find that the authors tend to belabour some of the points and the writing can be slightly confusing.
Otherwise, it’s a relatively interesting book!
March 16, 2026
I took the gaokao a decade ago.
十年前，我参加了高考。
Even now, the suffocating heat of those June days and the sheer weight of that single exam still linger in my memory. Reading The Highest Exam brought it all rushing back—the sleepless nights, the silent classrooms, and the quiet bargain every student struck with fate: perform well on this one test, and your life will be different.
直到今天，六月天里令人窒息的暑热、那场考试压在身上的千钧之重，仍然挥之不去。读《最高的考试》，一切记忆扑面而来——失眠的夜晚、寂静的教室，以及每个考生都曾在心底与命运悄悄立下的契约：考好这一次，人生就会不同。
For the vast majority of Chinese people, the gaokao is not something one can simply walk away from. It is deeply woven into who we are. I am no exception. My score was not high enough for a prestigious "985" university; I landed at a solid but less celebrated "211" institution. Yet it was that credential—modest as it seemed—that became the stepping stone to my current career in the state sector (tizhinei). My life, in the most personal sense, is proof of what this book explores.
对绝大多数中国人来说，高考不是你能一走了之的事。它深深嵌入了我们的身份认同。我也不例外。我的分数不够上"985"名校，最终去了一所扎实但名气稍逊的"211"高校。然而，恰恰是这张看似不起眼的文凭，成了我日后进入体制内工作的敲门砖。从最私人的意义上说，我的人生轨迹本身，就是这本书所探讨之物的注脚。
Growing up, we all absorbed the same unspoken rule: this single metric would shape our future. We complained about the grueling, exam-driven system that seemed to crush our creativity, yet we followed its rigid rules without hesitation. For years, I could not explain why we gave in to a system we resented so deeply. The Highest Exam finally gave me the framework to understand this contradiction.
从小到大，我们都默默内化了同一条潜规则：这一个数字将决定你的未来。我们抱怨这套残酷的应试体制扼杀了创造力，却又毫不犹豫地遵从它的一切规则。多年来，我一直无法解释：我们为什么会臣服于一个自己如此厌恶的制度？《最高的考试》终于给了我理解这一矛盾的框架。
By weaving personal stories with careful empirical research, the authors reveal that the gaokao is far more than an academic test. They describe China's education system as a centralized, hierarchical tournament—a framework that lays bare how the exam mirrors the deeper logic of Chinese society: state governance, social sorting, and resource distribution. Much like the imperial civil service examinations of ancient China, the gaokao serves as a powerful political tool. It sustains social stability by offering a visible path for upward mobility, channeling the nation's talent—including ordinary students like me—into the state apparatus.
作者将个人叙事与严谨的实证研究交织在一起，揭示出高考远不只是一场学业考试。他们把中国的教育体系描述为一场"中央集权式层级锦标赛"——这一分析框架直指考试背后更深层的社会逻辑：国家治理、社会分层与资源分配。正如古代科举，高考充当着一种强大的政治工具：它提供了一条肉眼可见的上升通道，以此维系社会稳定，将全国的人才——包括像我这样的普通考��——输送进国家机器。
The book also dismantles the myth of absolute fairness. It exposes how structural barriers—the hukou system, regional quotas, and the stark urban-rural divide—sustain educational inequality, and how the state steers this tournament to match its strategic goals, such as the recent push toward STEM fields. Beyond China's borders, the authors explore how the deeply rooted gaokao mindset—the relentless pursuit of measurable academic success—shapes the behavior of Chinese immigrant families, often clashing with the holistic admissions culture of American universities.
本书同样拆解了"绝对公平"的迷思。它揭示了户籍制度、地区配额与触目的城乡鸿沟等结构性壁垒如何固化教育不平等，以及国家如何操控这场锦标赛以匹配战略目标——比如近年向STEM（理工科）领域的大力倾斜。放眼国门之外，作者还考察了根深蒂固的"高考心态"——对可量化学业成就的执念——如何塑造了海外华人移民家庭的行为模式，并频繁地与美国大学"综合评价录取"文化产生碰撞。
Ultimately, The Highest Exam is about much more than a test. It is a window into how Chinese institutions work and why they endure. It helped me understand why I, along with millions of others, remain bound to this system—not just out of necessity, but because of a cultural consensus shaped over centuries. For anyone who wants to truly understand China, this book is an essential place to start.
归根到底，《最高的考试》谈论的远不止一场考试。它是一扇窗，让人看见中国的制度如何运行、为何延续。这本书帮我理解了为什么我和千千万万人一样，始终被这套体系所牵引——不仅出于现实的需要，更因为一种历经数百年形塑的文化共识。对任何想要真正读懂中国的人而言，这本书是不可绕过的起点。
January 14, 2026
it is so interesting how much one exam system can reveal about the history/culture/politics of a nation. the sat/act could never. this quality of the gaokao kept this book engaging throughout, as it began with a brief history/basic facts about the exam before moving on to how, despite the actual gaokao changing very little, industrialization and societal shifts in china transformed the role of the gaokao and how it in turn was leveraged to further influence chinese society. and then also how these effects continue to trickle up and down in all the places chinese people find themselves today. since this is my review i guess i will mainly talk about how i feel influenced lol
the current format of the gaokao differs so much from the imperial exam system that the idea of meritocracy that took root in the sui dynasty is pretty much an illusion today. despite the word meritocracy being popularized satirically — because who are we to conflate competence with quality or whatever — it is still so compelling. fundamentally, stories told about the imperial exam and early administrations of the gaokao emphasizing the miracles of social mobility that they facilitated are underdog stories, and everyone loves an underdog. underdog stories are pure hopium, convincing us that we live in an world where everything is fair and we all have the same chance of becoming top dog (not so). so it is a consequence of the gaokao system that my parents grew up under that i am kind of a dreamy idealist who still believes in the possibility of underdogs. but even when this is a fact dug up by a discussion of the gaokao, there is some universal quality to the belief in underdogs that deceives not just people of chinese descent, but also americans whose american dream origin myth is yet another source of copium rehashing the idea that we all have a relatively similar chance of making it no matter where we start from. lowkey i do not know where i am going with this/this did not really come up in the book but maybe what i wanted to say was 1. i think how i think because the gaokao happened to my parents but 2. i probably would have thought this way anyway with different parents growing up in the u.s.?? which kind of means 3. the gaokao might be china’s thing but the intention behind it is some fundamental human tenet of being able to reap exactly what we sow. like it is honestly sad and sweet to read how naively chinese people are sometimes depicted in this book to rely on and believe so strongly in one test score being able to determine their place in the world. in a way they feel so much less cynical than americans who face the reality of corruption a bit more head-on :/// the way that china has managed to create and maintain this illusion so thoroughly is also very concerning given that it has only existed in its current form for around 70 years which is like barely three generations, and i think this generally made me think of how impressive post-imperial/republic china is or i guess how productive tyranny can somehow be… like in a sense a lot of the things underpinning modern china are very untested experiments based in really old traditions (one-child policy, hukous, gaokao) but the existence of a central power is somehow keeping all that stuff together. and it is especially interesting to read how the gaokao has been a highly effective tool used by that central power to shape society/economy/politics. even though the authors of this book are kinda like well we cannot really know whether the gaokao is good/bad, i feel like the majority of people would not like their big picture fate determined by a test they take before their frontal lobe is fully developed. in particular i can kind of come to appreciate that we live in a society where you can hack college admissions by photoshopping your face over a rower’s. there are so many avenues to success. jk. not to end this review on a depressing note completely unrelated to the book but i think this just means we are especially cooked in the u.s. if tyranny wins.
the current format of the gaokao differs so much from the imperial exam system that the idea of meritocracy that took root in the sui dynasty is pretty much an illusion today. despite the word meritocracy being popularized satirically — because who are we to conflate competence with quality or whatever — it is still so compelling. fundamentally, stories told about the imperial exam and early administrations of the gaokao emphasizing the miracles of social mobility that they facilitated are underdog stories, and everyone loves an underdog. underdog stories are pure hopium, convincing us that we live in an world where everything is fair and we all have the same chance of becoming top dog (not so). so it is a consequence of the gaokao system that my parents grew up under that i am kind of a dreamy idealist who still believes in the possibility of underdogs. but even when this is a fact dug up by a discussion of the gaokao, there is some universal quality to the belief in underdogs that deceives not just people of chinese descent, but also americans whose american dream origin myth is yet another source of copium rehashing the idea that we all have a relatively similar chance of making it no matter where we start from. lowkey i do not know where i am going with this/this did not really come up in the book but maybe what i wanted to say was 1. i think how i think because the gaokao happened to my parents but 2. i probably would have thought this way anyway with different parents growing up in the u.s.?? which kind of means 3. the gaokao might be china’s thing but the intention behind it is some fundamental human tenet of being able to reap exactly what we sow. like it is honestly sad and sweet to read how naively chinese people are sometimes depicted in this book to rely on and believe so strongly in one test score being able to determine their place in the world. in a way they feel so much less cynical than americans who face the reality of corruption a bit more head-on :/// the way that china has managed to create and maintain this illusion so thoroughly is also very concerning given that it has only existed in its current form for around 70 years which is like barely three generations, and i think this generally made me think of how impressive post-imperial/republic china is or i guess how productive tyranny can somehow be… like in a sense a lot of the things underpinning modern china are very untested experiments based in really old traditions (one-child policy, hukous, gaokao) but the existence of a central power is somehow keeping all that stuff together. and it is especially interesting to read how the gaokao has been a highly effective tool used by that central power to shape society/economy/politics. even though the authors of this book are kinda like well we cannot really know whether the gaokao is good/bad, i feel like the majority of people would not like their big picture fate determined by a test they take before their frontal lobe is fully developed. in particular i can kind of come to appreciate that we live in a society where you can hack college admissions by photoshopping your face over a rower’s. there are so many avenues to success. jk. not to end this review on a depressing note completely unrelated to the book but i think this just means we are especially cooked in the u.s. if tyranny wins.
September 25, 2025
Having worked in publishing for over four decades, I have a professional quirk: whenever I pick up a new book, the first thing I check is the publisher. In my two reading groups, we rarely choose titles from university presses—the assumption being that their books are usually too academic for general reading. The Highest Exam, however, published by Belknap Press, the renowned imprint of Harvard University Press, breaks that stereotype. It is a surprisingly personal and thoroughly engaging read.
The authors weave together vivid personal stories—including their own Gaokao experiences—with decades of research on the subject. The book brings a unique lens into one of China’s most powerful and enduring institutions: the Gaokao, the centralized college entrance exam. For generations of students, their families, and society at large, the Gaokao has been nothing short of transformative.
Anyone who applied to college in China after the late 1970s has a Gaokao story. Mine goes back to the fall of 1977, nearly half a century ago, when China held its first national college entrance exam after the Cultural Revolution had shuttered universities for a decade. That year, more than 4 million people, age from 18 to 36, took the exam. Because of the overwhelming demand and limited university capacity, provinces like Zhejiang (where I took my test) required two rounds: a preliminary filter and then the final, admission-deciding exam. The national acceptance rate was 4.7% for the “Class of 77”.
For my classmates and me, the Gaokao was life-changing. At that historical moment, the exam symbolized hope and fairness. It reopened the doors of higher education and offered young people, families, and society a way to rebuild after the “lost years” of the Cultural Revolution.
But as the authors show, over time the Gaokao has morphed into something far more daunting: a massive machine that dominates China’s education system. The relentless pursuit of higher scores has become an obsession for students and parents alike, widening social divides and channeling enormous resources into a single, high-stakes test. The very system that once symbolized opportunity now often feels like a trap.
So why does the Gaokao still hold such immense power in China—so much so that nothing comparable exists elsewhere in the world? The authors have spent much of their professional lives searching for that answer. They argue persuasively that to understand China today—its families, government, society, and even its global role—you must first understand one of its deepest foundations: the examination system, a thousand-year-old institution that has shaped the country at every critical turning point.
Whether you once sat for the Gaokao yourself, or you’re simply curious about the invisible forces behind China’s enduring cultural obsession with exams, this book will both inform and captivate you.
The authors weave together vivid personal stories—including their own Gaokao experiences—with decades of research on the subject. The book brings a unique lens into one of China’s most powerful and enduring institutions: the Gaokao, the centralized college entrance exam. For generations of students, their families, and society at large, the Gaokao has been nothing short of transformative.
Anyone who applied to college in China after the late 1970s has a Gaokao story. Mine goes back to the fall of 1977, nearly half a century ago, when China held its first national college entrance exam after the Cultural Revolution had shuttered universities for a decade. That year, more than 4 million people, age from 18 to 36, took the exam. Because of the overwhelming demand and limited university capacity, provinces like Zhejiang (where I took my test) required two rounds: a preliminary filter and then the final, admission-deciding exam. The national acceptance rate was 4.7% for the “Class of 77”.
For my classmates and me, the Gaokao was life-changing. At that historical moment, the exam symbolized hope and fairness. It reopened the doors of higher education and offered young people, families, and society a way to rebuild after the “lost years” of the Cultural Revolution.
But as the authors show, over time the Gaokao has morphed into something far more daunting: a massive machine that dominates China’s education system. The relentless pursuit of higher scores has become an obsession for students and parents alike, widening social divides and channeling enormous resources into a single, high-stakes test. The very system that once symbolized opportunity now often feels like a trap.
So why does the Gaokao still hold such immense power in China—so much so that nothing comparable exists elsewhere in the world? The authors have spent much of their professional lives searching for that answer. They argue persuasively that to understand China today—its families, government, society, and even its global role—you must first understand one of its deepest foundations: the examination system, a thousand-year-old institution that has shaped the country at every critical turning point.
Whether you once sat for the Gaokao yourself, or you’re simply curious about the invisible forces behind China’s enduring cultural obsession with exams, this book will both inform and captivate you.
February 16, 2026
I discovered this book through a WSJ article written by the authors, and I embarrassingly didn’t even know what the gaokao was. The first two chapters should be required reading for every teenager who thinks the SAT is too much to ask. I am amazed these writers are less a decade older than me. When their American counterparts were listening to Motley Crue with boom boxes on their shoulders, Chinese teenagers of the late ‘80s were watching their own people get shot down in Tianamen Square, they were usually hungry, and they spent all of their time preparing for the gaokao. In its present form, the gaokao is a grueling college entrance exam, taking 3 days to complete (8 hour days). It is virtually the only way for a person in China to jump into a higher social class.
The test has roots going back to the Imperial Exam system of the Song Dynasty (600-1000AD), where one was required to memorize volumes of Confucian texts, an intellectual feat taking from years to decades to accomplish. By the Qing era (1800s), the passing rate was incredibly low—less than a third of 1%, and that’s assuming a person could take the test 10 times. The Qing Dynasty eventually abandoned the system. When the PRC was established in 1949, leaders resurrected it with the gaokao, which operated similarly, but instead of guaranteeing a government position it guaranteed college admission. In the late 1960s, Mao felt criticized by the elites who surrounded him (all high gaokao scorers), and upended the academic system practically overnight. He delegitimized intellectuals, established the Red Guard, and basically made academic prowess a marker of anti-Maoist tendencies (which meant public humiliation and/or death). To be anything but a worker was suddenly considered unpatriotic. The Chinese educational system and the gaokao were not re-introduced until Mao’s death in 1976. Today, the test is probably just as rigorous in its own way as what the Chinese were doing a thousand years ago, and the actual success rate just as rare. Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li were able to do well on the test, and rose to high levels within China’s educational system. Their insights on the strengths, weaknesses, and impact of the gaokao is all in this book. It is telling that they leveraged their success on the gaokao to leave China.
The test has roots going back to the Imperial Exam system of the Song Dynasty (600-1000AD), where one was required to memorize volumes of Confucian texts, an intellectual feat taking from years to decades to accomplish. By the Qing era (1800s), the passing rate was incredibly low—less than a third of 1%, and that’s assuming a person could take the test 10 times. The Qing Dynasty eventually abandoned the system. When the PRC was established in 1949, leaders resurrected it with the gaokao, which operated similarly, but instead of guaranteeing a government position it guaranteed college admission. In the late 1960s, Mao felt criticized by the elites who surrounded him (all high gaokao scorers), and upended the academic system practically overnight. He delegitimized intellectuals, established the Red Guard, and basically made academic prowess a marker of anti-Maoist tendencies (which meant public humiliation and/or death). To be anything but a worker was suddenly considered unpatriotic. The Chinese educational system and the gaokao were not re-introduced until Mao’s death in 1976. Today, the test is probably just as rigorous in its own way as what the Chinese were doing a thousand years ago, and the actual success rate just as rare. Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li were able to do well on the test, and rose to high levels within China’s educational system. Their insights on the strengths, weaknesses, and impact of the gaokao is all in this book. It is telling that they leveraged their success on the gaokao to leave China.
February 7, 2026
This book is a must-read to understand how the Gaokao, a single fateful exam that the country takes at eighteen for college admissions, undergirds surprisingly multitudinous facets of modern Chinese (and Chinese-American) culture, life, and economic institutions. Jia, Li, and Cousteau coin the term "ranked-tournament system" to describe the gaokao philosophy of using "objective" metrics to assess performance in an otherwise often corruptible society, and illustrate how this system is applied to roles ranging from government ministers (GDP) to scholars (citation count from a list of carefully selected journals).
If I were to nitpick, I wish the authors spent more time to critically interrogate, from a truly global perspective, where the gaokao system falls short. Although some are mentioned (protests arising from system changes, misoptimized incentives, endless tournaments, tang ping movement), a good portion of the book examines the levers the CCP uses to create curriculum/policy change in the education system and leaves it at that (i.e. changing curriculum, nudging students towards STEM). That is to say, solely comparing the US and China's systems is not comprehensive enough to show what the best system is as these two countries are not necessarily the leaders in every aspect (and for the US, certainly far from it in many cases). I also wish there was more space devising what the system of the future might look like — perhaps a hybrid of both. This is left as an exercise to the reader.
In any case, this book is the rare nonfiction book that is at the same time unusually informative, narratively engaging, and concise. Not an easy feat, and I give huge kudos to the authors for achieving this (often through recounting the authors' own experiences and relating it to the overall gao kao system). For that alone I'd put this book in my top 10 nonfiction reads of all time.
If I were to nitpick, I wish the authors spent more time to critically interrogate, from a truly global perspective, where the gaokao system falls short. Although some are mentioned (protests arising from system changes, misoptimized incentives, endless tournaments, tang ping movement), a good portion of the book examines the levers the CCP uses to create curriculum/policy change in the education system and leaves it at that (i.e. changing curriculum, nudging students towards STEM). That is to say, solely comparing the US and China's systems is not comprehensive enough to show what the best system is as these two countries are not necessarily the leaders in every aspect (and for the US, certainly far from it in many cases). I also wish there was more space devising what the system of the future might look like — perhaps a hybrid of both. This is left as an exercise to the reader.
In any case, this book is the rare nonfiction book that is at the same time unusually informative, narratively engaging, and concise. Not an easy feat, and I give huge kudos to the authors for achieving this (often through recounting the authors' own experiences and relating it to the overall gao kao system). For that alone I'd put this book in my top 10 nonfiction reads of all time.
January 4, 2026
20/30
The Highest Exam examines China’s gaokao not simply as a test, but as a governing institution, one that structures aspiration, family life, regional inequality, and state legitimacy. Jia treats the exam as a social technology: it promises meritocracy while simultaneously revealing how unevenly merit is produced and rewarded.
At its core, the gaokao is framed as the last large-scale belief in procedural fairness in modern China. For rural and lower-income families, it represents a narrow but real ladder of mobility. Jia shows how entire households orient themselves around a single student’s performance, reorganizing labor, emotion, and sacrifice toward exam success. The exam’s power lies less in its content than in its symbolic monopoly over legitimacy.
Yet Jia is unsparing about the system’s contradictions. Regional quotas, elite urban schools, test-prep industries, and political constraints hollow out the exam’s egalitarian promise. What emerges is not pure meritocracy, but a managed competition that stabilizes social order by channeling frustration into individual effort rather than collective critique. Failure becomes personal, not structural.
Crucially, Jia avoids romanticizing resistance. Opting out of the gaokao rarely leads to alternative success inside China; the system’s reach is too total. The exam persists not because it is fair, but because it is believable enough--and because no replacement has yet achieved comparable legitimacy.
The Highest Exam examines China’s gaokao not simply as a test, but as a governing institution, one that structures aspiration, family life, regional inequality, and state legitimacy. Jia treats the exam as a social technology: it promises meritocracy while simultaneously revealing how unevenly merit is produced and rewarded.
At its core, the gaokao is framed as the last large-scale belief in procedural fairness in modern China. For rural and lower-income families, it represents a narrow but real ladder of mobility. Jia shows how entire households orient themselves around a single student’s performance, reorganizing labor, emotion, and sacrifice toward exam success. The exam’s power lies less in its content than in its symbolic monopoly over legitimacy.
Yet Jia is unsparing about the system’s contradictions. Regional quotas, elite urban schools, test-prep industries, and political constraints hollow out the exam’s egalitarian promise. What emerges is not pure meritocracy, but a managed competition that stabilizes social order by channeling frustration into individual effort rather than collective critique. Failure becomes personal, not structural.
Crucially, Jia avoids romanticizing resistance. Opting out of the gaokao rarely leads to alternative success inside China; the system’s reach is too total. The exam persists not because it is fair, but because it is believable enough--and because no replacement has yet achieved comparable legitimacy.
September 26, 2025
最近在综合大楼的连廊里和周亦卿楼前经常看到贾教授这本书的海报啊…明明下周一（September 29）MB328就有讲座的，可惜和tutorial时间冲突，只能来goodreads上写评论了（悲）。
总而言之，贾教授在The Highest Exam这本书里结合了个人叙事与数十年研究，生动讲述了高考如何塑造大陆社会（甚至影响美国的华裔教育）。
该书揭示了大陆的教育体系如何作为一种集中化的竞赛机制运作：它解释了为何高考备考甚至在小学时就已启动（如果无法上好高中就上不了好大学，上不了好初中就上不了好高中，以此类推）。解释了鉴于高考对阶层向上流动的重要性，中国家庭投入大量金钱与精力以求考出高分的行为实则是理性选择。还展现了这一考试体系如何服务于党的需求，并剖析了其对中国社会的深远影响：一定程度上被忽视的社会经济不平等问题和未来创意研发相关产业的petrifaction。此外，书中还阐明了高考如今也在塑造美国的教育：随着华裔家庭将对“最高考试”的期待带入美国，他们对教育体系中更客观评估标准的呼吁正日益与美国中小学及大学所采用的holistic measurements产生碰撞。
不过意外的是：尽管我是近两年才刚高考完的学生，我的个人高考经历（以及我市，即上海的高考）呈现出显著区别于常规认知的形态。
这种独特性首先体现在大学录取阶段的“综合评价制度”（简称“综评”）：与多数地区以高考成绩为唯一录取依据的模式不同，上海综评体系中15%的录取名额需结合学生面试表现综合评定，面试内容不仅覆盖多学科知识，更会依据学生简历中提及的能力（如多语言掌握情况）灵活设问。
除录取评价机制的差异外，上海学生在高考前还拥有更为丰富的升学选择（或许与本地教育基础及社会经济条件深度绑定）。作为中国大陆英语教育最发达的城市，上海为学生奠定了较好的外语能力基础（e.g. 我小学时大部分同学都能考过基础口译和中级口译，在两年级时同年级就有雅思7的同学，初高中雅思8的同学身边也有很多，包括我自己）；同时，本地中产家庭的经济实力虽未必支撑孩子全程走国际教育体系，却足以负担托福、雅思等语言考试的备考成本。因此，成绩中上游的学生常选择在高中阶段考取语言成绩，借助“语言成绩+面试”的方式申请NYU Shanghai、Duke Kunshan等中外合办高校—此类院校通常在高考前半年公布录取结果，以NYUSH为例，获得A档评价的学生仅需达到高考一本线即可录取，显著缓解了部分学生的高考压力。此外，港校推出的降分政策给上海头部高中的校推名额会显著高于其他地区。以HKU的多元卓越计划为例，可为符合条件的学生提供5至30分的录取降分，使部分按纯粹高考成绩仅能进入中下游985高校的学生获得更优质的升学机会。
因为本书在谈高考学习模式的弊端，却很少提到这种学习模式该如何转化；我私认为上海的综评制度就是一个很好的例子—外省肯定有无法负担中外合办大学/港校的家庭，但综评制度对经济条件没有要求，在一定程度上也能敦促家长和学生将注意力一定程度放到提升综合能力上—尽管长期以来高考的重要性依旧不会改变。
总而言之，贾教授在The Highest Exam这本书里结合了个人叙事与数十年研究，生动讲述了高考如何塑造大陆社会（甚至影响美国的华裔教育）。
该书揭示了大陆的教育体系如何作为一种集中化的竞赛机制运作：它解释了为何高考备考甚至在小学时就已启动（如果无法上好高中就上不了好大学，上不了好初中就上不了好高中，以此类推）。解释了鉴于高考对阶层向上流动的重要性，中国家庭投入大量金钱与精力以求考出高分的行为实则是理性选择。还展现了这一考试体系如何服务于党的需求，并剖析了其对中国社会的深远影响：一定程度上被忽视的社会经济不平等问题和未来创意研发相关产业的petrifaction。此外，书中还阐明了高考如今也在塑造美国的教育：随着华裔家庭将对“最高考试”的期待带入美国，他们对教育体系中更客观评估标准的呼吁正日益与美国中小学及大学所采用的holistic measurements产生碰撞。
不过意外的是：尽管我是近两年才刚高考完的学生，我的个人高考经历（以及我市，即上海的高考）呈现出显著区别于常规认知的形态。
这种独特性首先体现在大学录取阶段的“综合评价制度”（简称“综评”）：与多数地区以高考成绩为唯一录取依据的模式不同，上海综评体系中15%的录取名额需结合学生面试表现综合评定，面试内容不仅覆盖多学科知识，更会依据学生简历中提及的能力（如多语言掌握情况）灵活设问。
除录取评价机制的差异外，上海学生在高考前还拥有更为丰富的升学选择（或许与本地教育基础及社会经济条件深度绑定）。作为中国大陆英语教育最发达的城市，上海为学生奠定了较好的外语能力基础（e.g. 我小学时大部分同学都能考过基础口译和中级口译，在两年级时同年级就有雅思7的同学，初高中雅思8的同学身边也有很多，包括我自己）；同时，本地中产家庭的经济实力虽未必支撑孩子全程走国际教育体系，却足以负担托福、雅思等语言考试的备考成本。因此，成绩中上游的学生常选择在高中阶段考取语言成绩，借助“语言成绩+面试”的方式申请NYU Shanghai、Duke Kunshan等中外合办高校—此类院校通常在高考前半年公布录取结果，以NYUSH为例，获得A档评价的学生仅需达到高考一本线即可录取，显著缓解了部分学生的高考压力。此外，港校推出的降分政策给上海头部高中的校推名额会显著高于其他地区。以HKU的多元卓越计划为例，可为符合条件的学生提供5至30分的录取降分，使部分按纯粹高考成绩仅能进入中下游985高校的学生获得更优质的升学机会。
因为本书在谈高考学习模式的弊端，却很少提到这种学习模式该如何转化；我私认为上海的综评制度就是一个很好的例子—外省肯定有无法负担中外合办大学/港校的家庭，但综评制度对经济条件没有要求，在一定程度上也能敦促家长和学生将注意力一定程度放到提升综合能力上—尽管长期以来高考的重要性依旧不会改变。
March 13, 2026
Fascinating book. Deep dive into China's flagship exam, the culture around it, and the "tournament" mentality that permeates Chinese culture.
The Chinese exam culture is obviously not perfect, but in many ways it is more fair than the US system. As it relates to college admissions, the Chinese criteria is much more objective (as unpleasant as it may be to go through, students at least know what they need to achieve) whereas the US criteria is certainly more subjective and opaque.
The authors have experience in both the US and Chinese education systems and they were able to compare and contrast the two. There is no debate - they believe - that the similar US colleges provide a superior education than their Chinese counterparts, but it is likely also true that Chinese elementary and middle school is also superior. It was also interesting to learn that getting into a Tsinghua, Peking University, or Fudan impacts life far more dramatically in China than getting into a similar university in the US does.
I also thought the authors' perspective on achieving tenure in Chinese academia was fascinating. I learned many things in that chapter. It is an example of the Gaokao tournament style being exported to other systems in China.
The Chinese exam culture is obviously not perfect, but in many ways it is more fair than the US system. As it relates to college admissions, the Chinese criteria is much more objective (as unpleasant as it may be to go through, students at least know what they need to achieve) whereas the US criteria is certainly more subjective and opaque.
The authors have experience in both the US and Chinese education systems and they were able to compare and contrast the two. There is no debate - they believe - that the similar US colleges provide a superior education than their Chinese counterparts, but it is likely also true that Chinese elementary and middle school is also superior. It was also interesting to learn that getting into a Tsinghua, Peking University, or Fudan impacts life far more dramatically in China than getting into a similar university in the US does.
I also thought the authors' perspective on achieving tenure in Chinese academia was fascinating. I learned many things in that chapter. It is an example of the Gaokao tournament style being exported to other systems in China.
October 27, 2025
I read this book with great interest, both as someone who has personally gone through China’s education system and as a reader familiar with the academic literature on the subject. For readers like me, who already know the system well, the book provides a refreshing and entirely new perspective: it frames education not just as a schooling process but as a foundational institution of Chinese society, deeply rooted in centuries of history.
The book masterfully illustrates the tight link between the examination system on the surface and the meritocratic social order at its core. This connection helps explain many striking features of Chinese society today: the “arms race” in children’s education, the relentless competition not only among students but also among employees, firms, and bureaucrats, and, more recently, the alarmingly low and declining fertility rate.
For anyone who seeks to understand both the past and the future of China, this book is indispensable. Beyond China, it also prompted me to reflect on the U.S. education system and what it means for the future competitiveness of human capital in both countries.
3 people found this helpful
The book masterfully illustrates the tight link between the examination system on the surface and the meritocratic social order at its core. This connection helps explain many striking features of Chinese society today: the “arms race” in children’s education, the relentless competition not only among students but also among employees, firms, and bureaucrats, and, more recently, the alarmingly low and declining fertility rate.
For anyone who seeks to understand both the past and the future of China, this book is indispensable. Beyond China, it also prompted me to reflect on the U.S. education system and what it means for the future competitiveness of human capital in both countries.
3 people found this helpful
December 23, 2025
So much more than just an exam, this book dives into gaokao as a political tool, an economic lever, social mobility ladder, etc
The enduring nature of the institution of The Exam is also explained, with a detour in Mao's era.
Last, the gaokao as a mirror of other social structures (employment, political hierachy, academia) and the social effects of its export through immigrant communities was described - this helped me realise some of my own entrenched bias'es and beliefs on hierachical tournament style education
Some parts of the book seem to be very "economics" - in that derivative statistics are used to explain highly complex social environments and results in a way that blurs causality and correlation.
For me, book especially shines in its personal anecdotes from the authors of their lived experiences as students, academics and parents.
The writing here was also done really well, condensing the many quantitiative economic studies into something cohesive and impactful.
The enduring nature of the institution of The Exam is also explained, with a detour in Mao's era.
Last, the gaokao as a mirror of other social structures (employment, political hierachy, academia) and the social effects of its export through immigrant communities was described - this helped me realise some of my own entrenched bias'es and beliefs on hierachical tournament style education
Some parts of the book seem to be very "economics" - in that derivative statistics are used to explain highly complex social environments and results in a way that blurs causality and correlation.
For me, book especially shines in its personal anecdotes from the authors of their lived experiences as students, academics and parents.
The writing here was also done really well, condensing the many quantitiative economic studies into something cohesive and impactful.
February 7, 2026
Понад сто мільйонів китайських абітурієнтів щорічно долають «ґаокао» – національний вступний іспит до університету. Упродовж кількох днів червня все китайське суспільство буквально зупиняється: у містах забезпечують ідилію тиші, родини відправляють ювелірні обрячі в храми з проханням про успіх дітей, а найуспішніші учні в кожній провінції отримують неабияку популярність – інколи їх навіть оберігають від надмірної уваги державні інститути . Цей короткий період підготовки та здачі ґаокао визначає майбутнє багатьох поколінь – і саме тому в книзі Ruixue Jia та Hongbin Li «The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China» розглядають іспит не окремо, а як основу всієї освітньої системи Китаю. Вони описують ґаокао як «підсумкове випробування» централізованого, ієрархічного «турніру», що визначає освітні та кар'єрні траєкторії тисяч школярів . Водночас, як зауважує академічний коментатор Kenneth Wong, будь-які спроби кардинально змінити систему можуть підірвати соціальну стабільність в країні, тому сам іспит зберігає широку довіру громадськості як символ справедливості і прозорості
January 6, 2026
This book is a MUST READ for anybody who wants to understand modern day China (I think, I've never been to China, but both authors were born and raised there so I'll take their word for it).
Not only does this book explain a lot of the details about how China's entrance exam works, it also ties the "tournament style" education system to Chinese politics, societal values (and the historical context of WHY certain traits are valued), internal social dynamics, and the general mindset adopted by the modern day Chinese workforce and economy. That said, despite the fact that this is a relatively short book (~210 pg.), I found it to be oddly tiring. Despite it's small size, I thought the book was pretty dense, and includes a lot of information. 9/10. If I had read this a month earlier, this would've been among my 5 best books of the year.
Not only does this book explain a lot of the details about how China's entrance exam works, it also ties the "tournament style" education system to Chinese politics, societal values (and the historical context of WHY certain traits are valued), internal social dynamics, and the general mindset adopted by the modern day Chinese workforce and economy. That said, despite the fact that this is a relatively short book (~210 pg.), I found it to be oddly tiring. Despite it's small size, I thought the book was pretty dense, and includes a lot of information. 9/10. If I had read this a month earlier, this would've been among my 5 best books of the year.
March 28, 2026
The Gaokao exam was mentioned in several books I've read so when I saw this book for sale I was interested. The book examines the history of exams in Chinese history, the evolution of the Gaokao, its cancelation of the exam during Mao, and its resurgence in an ultra competitive environment. The authors, who now live in California, also examine the "tournament" from the position of parents and juxtapose it with the public schools in Palo Alto (which had the truly insane idea to punish gifted students and eliminate advanced courses in the name of equity).
December 31, 2025
Accessible, informative look at China’s education system and all-important test: the Gaokao. The authors did a masterful job of looking at the origins of the test, the reasons for the Gaokao, and the socioeconomic implications associated with it. As Jia and Li note in the book, a good way to get to know a country is to look at its education system. The Highest Exam gives the reader an excellent opportunity to gain a greater understanding about China and how it ticks.
February 22, 2026
The education system is key to understanding so many emerging trends about Chinese tech dominance. pretty academic in nature with lots of survey data that I don't necessarily remember, but even if the knowledge only exists in my subconscious, it provides much more context than any other short news piece could capture. E.g. this was excellent background for this nice piece: https://www.ft.com/content/68f60392-8...
October 21, 2025
20251021
近十来年民间是有这样的风潮，但这应该不算传统习俗，作者有点把民间谐音迷信的现象奇观化。
肉蛋配给额度相比现代人的消耗度来说相当低了，所以饥饿真的是传承无数世代的集体记忆。
men put on qipaos, traditional dresses typically worn by women, as a symbol of luck.
近十来年民间是有这样的风潮，但这应该不算传统习俗，作者有点把民间谐音迷信的现象奇观化。
But with only one coupon per person for half a pound of pork and four eggs per month, Little Li also knew hunger.
肉蛋配给额度相比现代人的消耗度来说相当低了，所以饥饿真的是传承无数世代的集体记忆。
March 6, 2026
写法有点绕，开头结尾不同个人经历是否有意义见仁见智。中间论证部分还是有干货：科举-高考把锦标赛思维植入了学生脑中。无论一个人是否选择参与教育锦标赛，他仍然受制于该体系所延续的模式在等级制度面前，��体不可避免地被要求竞争。正是中国的教育体系，让学生们为成功参与这种他们在作为中国社会公民一生中必然会遇到的锦标赛式模式做好了准备。
制度的最大受益者是制定制度的人，即政府通过高考制度收编了本可能走上社会形成力量制衡政府的人才。
“中国的教育系统仍然在大多数学生中培养对政府的忠诚感，而成绩最好的学生仍然最有可能加入下一代官僚队伍。”
“最有可能成为其领域成功开拓者、并可能创办下一家独角兽科技公司的人，正是那些最有可能加入国有部门的人。”
制度的最大受益者是制定制度的人，即政府通过高考制度收编了本可能走上社会形成力量制衡政府的人才。
“中国的教育系统仍然在大多数学生中培养对政府的忠诚感，而成绩最好的学生仍然最有可能加入下一代官僚队伍。”
“最有可能成为其领域成功开拓者、并可能创办下一家独角兽科技公司的人，正是那些最有可能加入国有部门的人。”
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