Protests Over, China Students Face Exams

BEIJING —  The students in the courtyard of the Ritan High School on Saturday were not thinking about pro-democracy protests, counterrevolutionary rebellions or martial law. They were cramming.

Just six weeks ago, many of the high school seniors had joined in the massive protests in Tian An Men Square, with banners assuring the demonstrators’ older university leaders, “We are your younger brothers and sisters; we are the next you.”

But now, with textbooks open under Beijing’s baking summer sun, they were sweating it out in the process of taking their college entrance exams.

The protests of the spring, they explained, are a thing of the past. The exams are their future.

Politics Now Secondary

“We still care about politics, but right now that is secondary,” said one senior, an 18-year-old woman who spoke good English to an American visitor in the courtyard shortly before an afternoon round of testing began. “This is the most important thing in our life right now.

“If we fail, no job, no money bad life. But if we succeed now and make it to the university, maybe then we can again think about politics. Yes, the pressure on every one of us is very, very great right now.”

“Black July,” the students’ traditional nickname for the all-important three days of college testing, has arrived in Beijing. This year, it has a stark double meaning with the exams coming just a few weeks after the army and hard-line Communist Party leaders cracked down on the student-led protests and killed hundreds--some say thousands--of pro-democracy demonstrators.

But there are other, larger forces at work in Chinese society. And for nervous high school students throughout China this weekend, the present reality was largely restricted to their own personal futures.

Pressure of Competition

The pressure is in the numbers. During the three days of testing that ends today with an examination of their political loyalties, 2.26 million high school students competed for 640,000 university slots. Nearly three-fourths of them will not make the cut, and instead will be assigned to work units in factories, offices or farms--or, worse, be forced to go out and find their own jobs at a time of unprecedented unemployment and inflation.

In Beijing, the students have some advantage. The schools here, and in most major Chinese cities, are better than those in the countryside. But the pressure to succeed also is intense in Beijing, where there were 34,800 high school students trying to qualify for 17,000 university openings.

The exams, although similar in concept to America’s Scholastic Aptitude Tests, are far longer and more difficult than their U.S. counterparts. And now, after eight years of economic liberalization have created a new consciousness of consumerism and ambition once unheard of in Communist China, the pressure is all the greater.

Even the English-language China Daily commented on the phenomenon. It told about Zhu Zhisheng, who had accompanied his ailing son to school for the first round of testing Friday. Last month, Zhu explained, his son was hospitalized for a severe stomach ailment.

“I have to wait here,” he told the newspaper. “I am afraid he might break down.”

So dreaded is the testing process that in the past it has led to widespread cheating and even suicide.

A year ago, the government reported that one student had hidden a two-way microphone inside his shirt and was fed answers from 21 collaborating teachers and school officials. At the same time, the party newspapers told about a 19-year-old student who was caught cheating and later strangled his parents in a fit of rage. And a third Beijing student who had been driven to suicide by the entrance exams left a note that despondently proclaimed, “I am no longer naive and happy. I have become indifferent to the outside world. I am just a slave to exams. Only when I die can I be free.”

Although Saturday’s mood in the courtyard of Ritan High School was free of evidence of such despair, many comments of the young men and women reflected the additional anxiety provoked by the recent grim events, which occurred during a time when high school seniors ordinarily would have been studying hard for the entrance exams

The exams test students on a full range of subjects, including mathematics, English, science, history and politics. The political testing that takes place today was the subject of most of the conversation in the courtyard Saturday.

Student Mocks Deng

“Oh yeah, Deng Xiaoping (China’s paramount leader) is very correct,” one student shouted with a laugh. “Everything Comrade Deng says is perfectly correct. This is how to pass the political exam.”

Another young man was a bit more serious, but he sounded equally cynical.

“They ask us to differentiate between the capitalist system and the socialist system, and we’re supposed to include in our answer the facts that, No. 1, if you want to be president of the United States, you have to be rich, and, No. 2, the concept of democracy in the West only works for those who have money.

“But don’t you have any of this kind of stuff in the United States?”

The American visitor replied that college entrance exams in the United States test only academic subjects, not political indoctrination.

” . . . I wish I could take that test,” the student replied. “I’d do just fine on the American test.”

Hand of Caution

An even more serious student placed his hand on his friend’s back and said, “You shouldn’t be saying these things to a foreigner,” but the friend just shrugged it off.

The 18-year-old woman who had said politics must now come second discussed her role in the pro-democracy demonstrations more openly than the others in the group.

“I was there,” she said. “There were 1 million of us in the street. But the newspapers in Beijing said we were only 30,000. And then, after the army came (on June 3-4), I went around asking other students how many people had died, and everyone said thousands, maybe 10,000. But the government said only 300 were killed. I think somebody is lying.

“We are still thinking about these things. They still worry us. But, well, today, there just isn’t time for this. We must worry more about our future.”

Asked why it is so important for her personally to win a place in the university, the woman pointed to the young man beside her and said, “He is a boy. He has many paths he can take, even if he fails the exams. I am a girl. If I fail, I have very few choices. I don’t want to be a simple typist or a farmer or a factory worker.”

Asked about her aspirations, she said: “I want to be a teacher--a Chinese language teacher.

She said it didn’t matter to her that an average teacher’s salary in China is only 160 yuan (about $40) a month. “The money isn’t important. I just want to do something useful.”

Suddenly, her smile faded, and speaking almost in a whisper, she said: “Uh oh. It’s a soldier.”

A People’s Liberation Army officer in fatigues was frowning and staring as he approached the group of students and the American.

“We better shut up, and you better go,” she said nervously. “Besides, we have to go take our exams. And that really is more important now.”

Nick Driver, The Times’ research assistant in Beijing, contributed to this report.