In 1979, Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 asserted that cultivating workers’ suzhi 素质 is crucial for advancing China out of poverty.Footnote 1 Over four decades of transformative growth later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to leverage suzhi in policy discourse as a driving force behind educational reform aimed at sustaining national prosperity.
Research has consistently documented the unpopularity of a suzhi-based curriculum – known as suzhi jiaoyu 素质教育 – among educators, students and scholars. Yet no study on perceptions of suzhi jiaoyu has extended its scope to include citizens outside of education. Amid an unprecedented third term, President Xi Jinping 习近平 faces mounting pressure to address China’s economic stagnation and surging youth unemployment.Footnote 2 In 2025, Xi incorporated the comprehensive implementation of suzhi jiaoyu into his education blueprint for “national rejuvenation,” declaring his confidence in the curriculum’s ability to legitimize his leadership.Footnote 3 With existing ethnographic research being conducted in educational institutions only, there is a critical need to explore other sites to assess whether citizens elsewhere share Xi’s belief in the curriculum’s effectiveness in addressing pressing social challenges. Addressing this gap, I move beyond the perspectives of exclusively educational actors to examine discourse on Zhihu 知乎, one of China’s most popular social media platforms. Online platforms offer space for citizens to express views on suzhi jiaoyu and link their concerns to broader debates on social problems. Analysing these discussions provides valuable insight into public dissatisfaction with CCP rhetoric in both educational and developmental contexts. I use a comparison of the themes emerging from Zhihu posts with those in the academic literature to explore if there is any resonance between the two.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, I review the literature on suzhi jiaoyu and erstwhile reforms. Next, I justify my use of netnography and grounded theory as methodological approaches, detailing the dataset and coding techniques used to produce findings. After an initial analysis of the Zhihu data, I establish two research questions for further analysis. First, is suzhi jiaoyu largely popular or unpopular among users of Zhihu? Second, how have opinions been informed by China’s modern political and socio-economic landscape?
My study reveals the overwhelming unpopularity of suzhi jiaoyu, with critics highlighting its role in undermining upward social mobility and exacerbating regional inequalities. These critiques reflect a broader lack of trust in the CCP’s ability to address such disparities through its existing reforms, both within education and beyond. I conclude by examining how Zhihu users’ perceptions of current social issues may influence their support for the state and, in turn, shape the direction of future state-led reforms.
Defining and Contextualizing Suzhi Jiaoyu
Often translated as “quality education,” suzhi jiaoyu focuses not on the quality of the education but rather on “the quality such education leads to.”Footnote 4 Specifically, it refers to a curriculum designed to cultivate students’ “suzhi.” Suzhi evades direct translation, being an overarching, vague concept to express how people should cultivate their enlightenment, morality, intellect and well-being.Footnote 5 Following China’s integration into the global market, in the last decade suzhi has come to include Western-inspired cosmopolitan traits and neoliberal ideologies, such as English fluency and entrepreneurialism.Footnote 6 However, suzhi differs from Western understandings of neoliberalism, as suzhi development is not perceived as solely the individual’s responsibility.Footnote 7 Instead, it emphasizes the importance of refining the environment in which one lives and learns.Footnote 8 This philosophy justified the state’s decision to redesign the curriculum to create conditions that support students’ suzhi development.
Once introduced, suzhi jiaoyu replaced the long-standing yingshi jiaoyu 应试教育 – a term coined by sceptics to criticize the curriculum’s “exam-oriented” bias. Yingshi jiaoyu had endured largely due to its perceived necessity for success in the gaokao 高考, the university entrance exam that is decisive in shaping students’ future outcomes.Footnote 9 The yingshi jiaoyu curriculum was criticized for stifling creativity, neglecting holistic development and prioritizing the “spoon-feeding” of prescriptive content over fostering critical thinking.Footnote 10 Recognizing these limitations – especially in cultivating a globally competitive, high-suzhi workforce – the Ministry of Education (MOE) began reforming the curriculum at the turn of the 21st century. In 1999, the MOE officially established suzhi jiaoyu as the guiding policy for all future educational reforms; it has been continually revising testing mechanisms, textbooks and teacher training accordingly.Footnote 11
Problems in Implementation and Opinions on Suzhi Jiaoyu
One of the primary challenges in implementing suzhi jiaoyu is its conflict with the entrenched demands of the gaokao. Surprisingly, the introduction of suzhi jiaoyu did not lead to any fundamental changes in the national examinations that would justify a shift from yingshi jiaoyu.Footnote 12 Consequently, many schools continue to follow yingshi jiaoyu, reflecting the unpopularity of suzhi jiaoyu among educators, who favour a curriculum aligned with gaokao preparation.Footnote 13 While the MOE has since incorporated suzhi-based assessments into the gaokao to incentivize pedagogical change, these are often treated as a superficial tick-box exercise.Footnote 14 Teachers frequently neglect or outsource these assessments, viewing them as less important than traditional gaokao preparation.Footnote 15
Where gaokao results are not compromised by its implementation, suzhi jiaoyu can be welcomed by educators.Footnote 16 However, acceptance is largely confined to wealthy urban areas, highlighting another barrier to the popularity of suzhi jiaoyu; effective implementation is unrealistic given the financial realities of rural schools. Educators in Qiandongnan’s 黔东南 “poor school[s]” believe that suzhi jiaoyu undermines the physical and verbal discipline they rely on to ensure their students’ success, especially in the absence of high-quality educational resources.Footnote 17 Similarly, Andrew Kipnis found that rural students tolerate rote-learning out of “desperation” to attend university.Footnote 18 However, suzhi jiaoyu assumes students’ educational motivations are derived from self-enlightenment, prioritizing analytical skills over gaokao memorization. Thus, suzhi jiaoyu is unpopular among rural parents and students, who are concerned that rural students could be disadvantaged if these new skills are tested in the gaokao, as their schools cannot afford teachers who are trained in these approaches.Footnote 19
Alongside funding inequalities, perceptions of urban modernity versus rural backwardness also influence the acceptance of suzhi jiaoyu. The MOE justifies suzhi jiaoyu reforms by stressing the need for modernity and technological advancement.Footnote 20 In practice, however, successful suzhi cultivation is conflated with stigmatizing rurality, drawing on traditional beliefs that rural people are barriers to China’s development.Footnote 21 Yi Lin observes that teachers in suburban Xiamen 厦门 begrudge teaching the curriculum to students from rural backgrounds, believing that their lack of suzhi compared to urban locals makes them harder to teach.Footnote 22 Additionally, rural students resent the emphasis on subjects that will prepare them solely for urban life, at the presumed expense of gaokao preparation.Footnote 23 Rural students, therefore, perceive that suzhi jiaoyu cannot support them in gaining university admission and feel that their backgrounds are denigrated.
Existing research, which is confined to educational actors’ perspectives, concludes that the popularity of suzhi jiaoyu is shaped by its misalignment with gaokao preparation, its inaccessibility for underfunded schools and its potential to exacerbate regional inequalities. There is a notable gap in understanding how those not in education – and therefore not directly affected by curriculum reform – perceive it. This neglect is critical because the state has consistently promoted suzhi jiaoyu as a means to address broader societal challenges, including sustained economic growth and global competitiveness.Footnote 24 Xi Jinping’s advocacy for improvements in the population’s suzhi as a cornerstone of his vision for national rejuvenation further elevates the importance of assessing online perceptions.Footnote 25 If a suzhi-based curriculum proves unpopular, it could threaten his leadership and the CCP’s legitimacy, especially as social media users become increasingly vocal about socio-economic grievances.Footnote 26 By examining how citizens beyond educators and students perceive suzhi jiaoyu, this study addresses the intersection of education policy, political legitimacy and public opinion in contemporary China.
These considerations raise key questions. First, how do Zhihu users perceive suzhi jiaoyu? Do their concerns align with those highlighted in earlier studies, many of which predate Xi’s presidency? Finally, are the opinions of users influenced by pressing social issues such as inequality, economic stagnation and unemployment? Through these questions, I aim to provide a deeper understanding of the public discourse surrounding suzhi jiaoyu and its broader implications.
Data Collection and Site
To date, no research has established theoretical explanations for evolving (online) discourse on suzhi jiaoyu. Therefore, I employ grounded theory to let data collection and analyses guide the discovery of what concepts are relevant to this topic.Footnote 27 Otherwise, as a non-native, albeit fluent, Mandarin speaker, I risk relying upon misguided assumptions and hypotheses.
I use grounded theory to code answers retrieved through netnography of Zhihu. Netnography capitalizes on the growing popularity of social media as a setting where people with diverse perspectives interact.Footnote 28 On Zhihu, communities construct meanings around phenomena by answering questions, drawing on a mix of personal experience and expert opinion.Footnote 29 I engage in “lurking” – collecting Zhihu data without adding my own content.Footnote 30 I did not alert users to my presence, allowing the data to reflect the “naturalistic” culture of the platform.Footnote 31
Zhihu serves as a “popular venue for digital civic engagement in China” for discussions on political issues.Footnote 32 There are over two hundred questions related to suzhi jiaoyu, with answers still being uploaded. The anonymous participants and relatively minimal Party censorship make Zhihu a rich source of authentic and detailed data, including topics as controversial as homosexuality and gender politics.Footnote 33 Such information-rich posts are ideal for qualitative analysis.Footnote 34 Additionally, 80 per cent of Zhihu users are middle-class and/or highly educated.Footnote 35 While opinions expressed on Zhihu may not be representative, China’s middle-class intellectuals set values and influence popular opinion more generally, given their role in upholding social stability, which is often complemented by frequent social media interaction.Footnote 36 As 101 million users engage with Zhihu every month, its discourse around suzhi jiaoyu offers significant insights into public opinion on reform.
Bloggers are “publicly private” because they share private information with a large audience under a chosen username.Footnote 37 To enhance identity protection, I omit these usernames. Moreover, I translate posts originally written in Mandarin into English, making it harder to trace the authors. I also remove any personal information that might identify authors.
Data Overview
Zhihu is a “question-and-answer” site where users post questions and receive answers from others. All interactions are conducted in Mandarin by Chinese citizens. To find relevant Zhihu questions, I searched for “suzhi jiaoyu,” retrieving 203 questions and 5,329 answers.Footnote 38 I excluded questions and answers with irrelevant content and/or if they were posted multiple times. Each answer features an “upvote” option, allowing users to show approval of an answer. For efficacy, I excluded answers with no “upvotes”; this is unlikely to bias my results given that an initial sample showed that answers did not follow particular trends.
My final sample comprises 166 questions and 1,644 answers. The least upvoted answer received one upvote, while the most upvoted answer received 30,617. The mean number of upvotes per post is 62. Most Zhihu posts are influenced by themes arising from the most popular (upvoted) posts. Therefore, the majority of my quotes are lifted from these answers. I also include a handful of quotes from answers with relatively fewer upvotes, but only when they respond to opinions expressed in the most upvoted posts. My intention in selecting quotations is to illustrate the direction of popular Zhihu discourse on suzhi jiaoyu.
Data Collection
I collected the data between December 2022 and May 2023. Coding themes from posts was iterative, ensuring credibility through continually comparing findings with data. I began with open coding to identify initial concepts or “codes,” most of which were directly derived from user statements like “in my opinion …” to accurately capture Zhihu users’ views.Footnote 39 This resulted in 34 codes, converging around 34 specific post words or phrases. I then used axial coding to group the 34 codes into 5 categories, based on patterns and similarities. These categories reflect users’ predictions about suzhi jiaoyu. Some codes overlap when one phenomenon is perceived to have multiple effects. An exception is the category “suzhi jiaoyu is misunderstood,” which focused on users’ perceptions of the curriculum’s current state rather than predictions. Including this category was crucial, as users’ disparate (mis)understandings informed their opinions of the curriculum.
I added and reassessed codes and categories until they were saturated – i.e. until no new categories emerged.Footnote 40 Finally, selective coding integrated these categories into conclusive statements.Footnote 41 After coding answers, I translated quoted answers from Mandarin to English. All five categories and their overlaps are discussed further in the next section.
Coding Results
Responding to my first research question, most discourse on suzhi jiaoyu is negative, as evidenced in both descriptions of the curriculum and the volume of users expressing such views. Among these views, 13 per cent suggest that suzhi jiaoyu is misunderstood, reflecting the state’s failure to clarify the specifics of its implementation, and 43 per cent claim it will reinforce class stratification. The only category that demonstrates support for suzhi jiaoyu is from those who believe the reform is beneficial for development (17 per cent). Notably, posts opposing this view, although fewer (7 per cent), receive higher average upvotes (34 versus 16). Finally, 25 per cent of posts argue suzhi jiaoyu will fail to replace yingshi jiaoyu, reinforcing its unpopularity due to overlaps with other critiques like class solidification and widespread misunderstandings. The total percentages exceed 100 because many responses span multiple categories. I provide further analysis of these interconnections below, quoting different users to highlight shared themes. My primary focus is the second research question: how have opinions been shaped by China’s contemporary context?
Category One: suzhi jiaoyu is misunderstood
Many authors argue that suzhi jiaoyu is widely “misunderstood” (wujie 误解), particularly regarding its implementation. While suzhi jiaoyu discourse likely involves both educators and non-educators, there are few instances of the former clarifying how the curriculum will materialize. This suggests that even educators lack understanding or experience with its application. The confusion is largely attributed to the state’s ambiguous communication, challenging William Smith and Xiao Xu’s claim that the government has proactively disseminated information on the shift from yingshi jiaoyu to suzhi jiaoyu.Footnote 42
User 1: “At present, only the general outline of suzhi jiaoyu’s development from utopia to practicalities is given. [But] there is no appropriate economic basis for its realization, and no basis on which to examine it.” [203 upvotes]
At the time of writing, only a small proportion of schools had implemented the curriculum (as detailed in Category Five). Therefore, users are forced to speculate on how the curriculum might materialize. A common concern is that implementation could result in an “unfair” education system, with most users equating fairness with equal educational opportunities for both wealthy and poor students. For example, uncertainty about whether suzhi jiaoyu will retain high-stakes testing, particularly the gaokao, is a significant topic of anxiety. Some believe that diminishing the gaokao will result in unfair evaluation processes, allowing students to manipulate subjective assessments, such as morality scores, to their advantage.Footnote 43
User 2: “There is no evaluation standard for things like morality – whether there are teacher evaluations or classmate votes for them, these could be operated via opaque processes.” [245 upvotes]
Fairness is an important metric for netizens when evaluating the curriculum, as social class inequality often shapes their opinions. This concern may be influenced by Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign, which has promised to improve the incomes and life chances of impoverished and rural families.Footnote 44 While the campaign has yet to make significant progress, it has spotlighted disparities in wealth, job prospects and educational access, particularly between rural and urban areas. Users are acutely aware of these disparities and view the gaokao as a pathway to upward mobility for low-income, rural families. Consequently, any potential removal of the gaokao is opposed, as it is perceived as a threat to this opportunity.
User 3: “The dreams of ordinary or even impoverished families are all pinned on the gaokao. This is a good thing, please don’t destroy it.” [80 upvotes]
This corroborates previous research on how suzhi jiaoyu is perceived, finding that disadvantaged families regard yingshi jiaoyu to be a more effective pathway out of poverty.Footnote 45 However, while netizens staunchly defend the gaokao as a fair system, they overlook its well-documented biases against poorer students. Studies have found that even those who believe the gaokao to be fair acknowledge how the test disadvantages poor students, particularly in terms of access to tutoring opportunities and regional disparities in university entry requirements.Footnote 46 This disconnect may stem from users’ uncertainties about the impact and goals of suzhi jiaoyu, leading to their heightened defensiveness over the gaokao.
Given that Zhihu primarily attracts relatively privileged users, support for the gaokao alongside opposition to suzhi jiaoyu is unexpected. Previous research finds that middle-class families are enthusiastic about their children adopting elements of suzhi jiaoyu, especially cosmopolitanism and independent thinking.Footnote 47 This discrepancy may be due to many Zhihu users not being (or having family) directly involved in education. Another explanation is that the platform’s culture encourages more critical discourse than is observed in other contexts, as is explored in Category Two.
Category Two: increases “class solidification”
As discussed above, a common concern on Zhihu is that suzhi jiaoyu would reduce or eliminate high-stakes testing. Citizens view the gaokao as the cornerstone of university and job selection, so the prospect of it being scaled back is controversial. Many users believe it would lead to “class solidification” (jieji guhua 阶级固化), a term used so frequently that it informed this category’s construction. I understand the term to mean that social mobility would become impossible if suzhi jiaoyu were implemented. It implies awareness of China’s class-based hierarchy (especially in educational access) and represents frustration that promoting social mobility is seemingly not an educational priority.
User 4: “Yingshi jiaoyu gives the poor a small opportunity to free themselves, while suzhi jiaoyu basically cuts off any opportunities for the poor … If you don’t believe me, just dissect the example of the US. No matter what kind of illusion of suzhi jiaoyu you have in your heart, you must consider the cost of realizing it and whether it can be achieved fairly in China.” [2,662 upvotes]
Zhihu users often express their pride in the gaokao by referencing its imperial origins, where standardized testing was introduced to make social class de jure irrelevant in recruiting for government posts.Footnote 48 Although high-stakes standardized testing is now common internationally, discussions about the gaokao’s history foster its identity as a uniquely “Chinese” approach to promoting social mobility. In an increasingly nationalist online climate, users appear comfortable celebrating Chinese cultural achievements in these forums.Footnote 49 These discussions partly explain the unpopularity of suzhi jiaoyu, which is promoted as emulating Western systems.Footnote 50 Comparing suzhi jiaoyu to the perceived inequitable US system is a popular way to criticize the reform (in terms of upvotes).
User 5: “The scoring mechanisms of suzhi jiaoyu in the US involve various talents and skills (which are judged subjectively), and there are many scoring channels that only rich children can enjoy. For instance, the 2019 College Admissions Scandal revealed how rich Americans use ‘suzhi jiaoyu’ scoring mechanisms to allow their children to get higher scores and enter prestigious universities.” [2,525 upvotes]
Again, we see that Zhihu users’ support for education policies hinges on the perceived ability of policies to promote fair educational opportunities through social mobility. Alongside a reverence for standardized testing as inherently Chinese, this explains users’ strong preference for the gaokao, despite its limited opportunities for upward social mobility.
Another source of tension between the state’s and Zhihu users’ opinions of suzhi jiaoyu lies in how suzhi is defined. Users criticize the state for equating “suzhi” with participation in non-academic, extracurricular activities, or “interest classes” (xingqu ban 兴趣班) as they are known. The state has explicitly justified interest classes on the grounds that they will improve students’ suzhi. Footnote 51 Users argue that conflating suzhi with interest classes narrows opportunities for upward mobility, because the most advertised classes are costly and therefore inaccessible to most. This means that Zhihu discourse provides a more nuanced view of how Chinese citizens define suzhi, challenging scholars’ claims that suzhi jiaoyu discourse has “completely negated [suzhi’s] earlier connotations of innateness” in the public mindset.Footnote 52 Users recognize that the state has deployed suzhi as a “politically correct language of social snobbery” – indeed, the above quote is taken from the question “do the poor really not deserve suzhi jiaoyu?” – the most popular question concerning suzhi jiaoyu on Zhihu (1,012 answers).Footnote 53 Users have reclaimed the original definition of suzhi as representing innateness, rather than access to tangible consumer goods.
User 6: “What is suzhi jiaoyu? Do you think that being able to play the piano, write calligraphy and speak a few foreign languages is suzhi? The essence of suzhi is a person’s outlook on the world, outlook on life, and values … These are precisely not things that can be purchased, they must be subtly cultivated with atmosphere and time. It’s a shame that Chinese education has commodified suzhi.” [468 upvotes]
The narrative that suzhi jiaoyu entails costly interest classes likely stems from the fact that most suzhi jiaoyu schools are located in wealthy areas. It offers a third reason why many believe suzhi jiaoyu leads to class solidification – its expensive implementation. Zhihu users recognize the significant disparities in development and prosperity between rural and urban areas – Xi publicly justifies rural revitalization initiatives through referencing these.Footnote 54 However, users appear unconvinced that Xi’s efforts have effectively reduced regional inequalities; many cite China’s persistent wealth gaps as a major reason why it is unlikely that every school can afford suzhi jiaoyu, especially in an equitable manner. In a context of limited open political dissent, such discussions serve as a subtle form of dissent, allowing users to critique state policies indirectly by framing their arguments around practical concerns like resource allocation and fairness. The perception that wealth gaps will prevent the equitable implementation of suzhi jiaoyu reflects not just doubts about educational reform but also a broader critique of Xi’s rural revitalization efforts.
User 7: “The gap between the rich and the poor in our country is huge, and the speed of regional development is uneven … maybe children in [wealthy] coastal areas are accustomed to seeing iPhones, and often play with aerial photography, music, chess, calligraphy and painting. But for candidates from underdeveloped inland areas, the only weapons they can use to take the gaokao are ten-year-old textbooks.” [1,958 upvotes]
Lacking trust in Xi’s reforms, users venerate the gaokao as a “weapon” for upward social mobility for China’s poorest. Echoing Kipnis, they argue that without financial resources, the only opportunity for disadvantaged children to succeed is through rote learning the gaokao content.Footnote 55 Therefore, if suzhi jiaoyu abolishes the gaokao, users fear that poor students will lose their opportunities for mobility through education, as wealth and resources would replace effort and rote learning as the primary determinants of success. Since users believe the state wants to replace the gaokao with schemes for suzhi development, suzhi jiaoyu is largely unpopular on Zhihu.
User 8: “In any era, the poor have only one advantage – they are less afraid of death and bitterness [adversity] than the rich. Poor people have a chance to stand out only when they need to fight for their lives … my father was so poor that he couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes, but his gaokao scores were better than many of the children of university professors.” [532 upvotes]
Although the US education system is unpopular, some users believe that China’s education system should cultivate the skills that will allow it to match Western development levels. Suzhi jiaoyu, seen as promoting such skills, is supported by a minority who prioritize economic development over social mobility. This creates considerable conflict on Zhihu between the minority, who argue for suzhi jiaoyu and scaling back the gaokao (economic development at the expense of social mobility), and those who argue the opposite (a fair education system even at the expense of economic development).
Category Three: good impact on development
Answers on Zhihu that assert that suzhi jiaoyu is good for China’s development largely fall into two camps. The first maintains that suzhi jiaoyu enables China to catch up with the West in terms of development. A common concern on Zhihu is neijuan 内卷, a loan translation of the sociological concept of “involution.”Footnote 56 Both terms describe a situation where increased competition for limited resources leads to diminishing returns in both productivity and personal advancement.Footnote 57 In an educational context, neijuan reflects how China’s growing population has intensified competition for a limited number of educational opportunities. As more seek access to education, the qualifications needed to succeed rise, but opportunities do not grow in proportion.Footnote 58 Searching for a panacea to this unproductive phenomenon, some Zhihu users believe suzhi jiaoyu will allow students to innovate and discover new avenues of success.
User 9: “A country without the ability to innovate can hardly stand in the forest of the world’s nations … education is required to put the cultivation of people’s innovative spirit and creativity in a prominent position.” [85 upvotes]
Users in the second camp believe that suzhi jiaoyu lessens the importance of the gaokao, which they consider a flawed means of ensuring that students can contribute to China’s development. Supporters of suzhi jiaoyu argue that the skills conducive to economic development cannot be adequately measured by the gaokao, which only assesses memorization abilities. This focus stifles the development of economically useful skills, such as creativity and adaptability, echoing concerns about yingshi jiaoyu documented by academic research shortly before the introduction of suzhi jiaoyu.Footnote 59 Suzhi jiaoyu is popular among these users because it is understood as the only way to address the ramifications of the gaokao on China’s development. Users who express this opinion likely fuel the assumption that suzhi jiaoyu will diminish the importance of the gaokao, as outlined above.
User 10: “Sooner or later, students will realize that no matter how high their gaokao score is, it is useless … what companies need today is not problem-solving machines, but innovative talents which can solve unknown difficulties and challenges.” [46 upvotes]
In terms of upvotes, posts arguing that suzhi jiaoyu is beneficial for China’s development are not nearly as popular as those arguing against it. However, there is a substantial number of posts that agree with the government’s stance on the necessity of suzhi jiaoyu. The most popular answers acknowledge the difficulties in implementing suzhi jiaoyu presently but argue that the eventual benefits will outweigh costs. Concerns about China’s economic future likely shape the opinions of the supporters. Users appear to share Xi’s convictions that creating high-quality employment for university graduates is a priority, recognizing the growing mismatch between graduate skills and available jobs.Footnote 60
User 11: “Yingshi jiaoyu is like working in a production team for a pittance. It is relatively rigid, has lower risks and a low input-output ratio, while suzhi jiaoyu is like doing business – characterized by a need for resources and risks.” [205 upvotes]
This highlights the tension between those who view education as a tool for social mobility and those who see it as a driver of economic development. The latter group argues that economic benefits justify the “resources and risks” involved in implementing a curriculum that is the antithesis of the current one. But from a relative mobility standpoint, asking schools to single-handedly fund a new curriculum would likely jeopardize opportunities for upward social mobility for students in the poorest regions, with opinions aligning with previous literature that suggests that wealthier students have the monopoly over new educational opportunities.Footnote 61
Nevertheless, views in support of suzhi jiaoyu that align with CCP priorities remain largely unpopular on Zhihu (as reflected in upvotes). This is partly because many users believe education should prioritize social mobility over economic development. Additionally, some argue that suzhi jiaoyu might negatively impact economic development by entrenching inequalities, further undermining its appeal.
Category Four: bad impact on development
Posts asserting that suzhi jiaoyu is detrimental to China’s development are relatively infrequent but amass a high number of upvotes on average compared to posts in favour of suzhi jiaoyu. Supporters tend to focus on what the reform promises. This is possibly why praise comes only from those who argue it is good for China’s development – because the state has promised that improvements to students’ suzhi will accelerate economic growth. Those critical of the reform, however, base their arguments on how the reform has materialized in practice. Suzhi jiaoyu is then perceived as bad for development because many conflate the curriculum with the US education system, which critics perceive as merely teaching hobbies and failing to impart “useful” scientific knowledge.
User 12: “Suzhi jiaoyu in the West mainly teaches singing, dancing, rap, football, baseball and financial parasitism … yingshi jiaoyu is conducive to improving the scientific literacy of more people; it is the best education system.” [1,081 upvotes]
Similarly, some users argue that implementing suzhi jiaoyu in such a competitive environment may intensify, rather than alleviate, neijuan by adding another layer to the competition: the need to invest in interest classes. While previous research on opinions regarding suzhi jiaoyu has not found a connection between the curriculum and hobbies (as mentioned by User 12), this association appears as a recurring theme in my findings. The discrepancy may stem from earlier studies conducted before the 2021 “double reduction” policy, which explicitly linked suzhi jiaoyu to interest classes, a decision which was heavily criticized by users.
User 13: “In the early days of advocating for suzhi jiaoyu, choosing supplementary educational courses would indubitably allow some students to gain additional benefits (that is, improve their grades). Other parents soon caught on and participated in the arms race of supplementary courses … the increase in educational investment has changed from ‘value-added’ to ‘non-depreciated,’ falling into the prisoner’s dilemma. In this case, where the pie (educational resources for suzhi jiaoyu) is not getting bigger, this kind of competition is a zero-sum game, causing the essence of suzhi jiaoyu to be empty.” [72 upvotes]
Purposefully or otherwise, User 13’s sentiment directly opposes Xi’s “common prosperity” narrative, which promises to “make the pie bigger” in China’s business and institutional landscape to foster equitable development.Footnote 62 This disconnect between Xi’s rhetoric and the discussions on Zhihu highlights scepticism about the state’s ability to effectively achieve equitable resource allocation. It also reveals a shared understanding among both supporters and critics of suzhi jiaoyu that Chinese society is hyper-competitive. Competition in areas such as employment has worsened under Xi, with the private sector scaling back both in terms of vacancies and salary potential.Footnote 63 However, users’ views diverge on the beneficiaries of suzhi jiaoyu. Supporters believe everyone can benefit from the gains in innovation and creativity that a suzhi-based education could provide. In contrast, as mentioned by User 13, as a “zero-sum game,” suzhi jiaoyu will inevitably leave some students at a disadvantage. Given suzhi jiaoyu’s likelihood to exacerbate inequalities, users speculate that the curriculum is designed to maintain advantages for the wealthy in China’s hyper-competitive society.
User 14: “Wealthy families … originally advocated for foreign [Western] education while slandering China’s. It is mainly this group, coupled with the fact that they are students who have studied abroad, that make their criticisms easy to blindly believe … Elite education satisfies the needs of this specific class.” [84 upvotes]
Xi has attempted to curb the educational advantages enjoyed by the wealthy by limiting the resources available to private tutoring institutions and banning foreign investment to prevent price inflation for these services.Footnote 64 Despite these efforts, Zhihu users doubt the state’s ability to dismantle the wealthy’s dominance in educational success. Wealthy families continue to exploit the discourse surrounding suzhi jiaoyu to justify sending their children to study in the US, even amid growing geopolitical tensions, enhancing these students’ competitiveness in the job market.Footnote 65 This scepticism reflects broader doubts about the state’s commitment to equality, particularly in education. By critiquing the wealthy’s continued advantage, users implicitly challenge the effectiveness of Xi’s campaign against wealth-based privilege. Their criticism highlights a nuanced intersection of class awareness and nationalism: an acknowledgement of how social class hierarchies exacerbate issues like neijuan, combined with trust in yingshi jiaoyu to deliver better outcomes for the poor. This assessment is supported by posts detailing suzhi jiaoyu’s relation to class solidification (Category Two), with these two categories overlapping.
Category Five: suzhi jiaoyu has no effect on yingshi jiaoyu
As discussed in Category Two, most users assume that the implementation of suzhi jiaoyu has been limited to affluent areas. However, Zhihu testimonies suggest that many wealthy schools still primarily focus on students’ gaokao results. Although suzhi jiaoyu has been a guiding policy in educational reforms for over twenty years, the curriculum has not noticeably lessened the significance of the gaokao, which was reintroduced in 1977. Teachers, students and other Zhihu users believe that gaokao scores are the most important marker of educational success. This observation corroborates prior literature, which claims that the continued pressure on schools to secure good gaokao results has been a significant obstacle to replacing yingshi jiaoyu with suzhi jiaoyu. Footnote 66
User 15: “Shenzhen Middle School is well-known for its suzhi jiaoyu … But it still has remedial classes in the third year of senior high school, and self-study is also available until 22:25.” [22 upvotes]
Users often describe China’s education system as “gaokao-oriented,” suggesting that the exams are responsible for the slow implementation of educational reform. Users believe a suzhi curriculum’s only effect on the gaokao has been to add more content, which reflects official policy. According to the MOE, suzhi evaluations would be added to the gaokao by 2020, in the form of song recitals, drawing and physical education.Footnote 67 These additions inform the unpopularity of suzhi jiaoyu on Zhihu – the expanded curriculum has only made the gaokao harder. Students are now examined on both core and suzhi subjects within the same two years of high school. Ironically, Zhihu users believe that schools have responded to the new gaokao content by doubling down on yingshi jiaoyu methods. Therefore, when incorporated into the gaokao, suzhi jiaoyu has further legitimized and intensified rote-learning. This has left users disillusioned, as they perceive that suzhi jiaoyu is failing to deliver on its promise of pedagogical reform.
User 16: “Under the pressure of taking the gaokao, it’s impossible for me to really broaden my horizons in the fields of art, sports and humanities for just 60 marks, so I can only rote-learn … under the existing gaokao-oriented system, no one needs ‘examination-oriented suzhi jiaoyu’ to add to the burdens of the already difficult gaokao.” [1,939 upvotes]
Although users express frustration with the heavy gaokao-oriented nature of the pedagogies, their discontent is primarily directed at suzhi jiaoyu for adding pressure to the curriculum rather than at the gaokao itself. This reflects users’ enduring pride in the gaokao, which they believe is a system well-suited to China’s circumstances. It also highlights another reason why suzhi jiaoyu is perceived as ineffective in overhauling yingshi jiaoyu: users feel that the government has failed to consider China’s economic realities when implementing the curriculum, limiting its potential to significantly impact yingshi jiaoyu.
User 17: “In China’s large neijuan environment, no matter what kind of suzhi jiaoyu exists, the suzhi that is valued in the selection into higher education will be cultivated by way of yingshi jiaoyu … the crux of educational problems has never been education itself.” [276 upvotes]
Users recognize that China’s educational and economic resources and opportunities are limited.Footnote 68 This again reflects a broader lack of faith in Xi’s “common prosperity” initiative to “make the pie bigger” in these areas. Considering these limited opportunities, many rationalize or even take pride in the gaokao as a necessary mechanism for allocating such scarce resources to the most deserving individuals. Users highlight the stark wealth disparities between rural and urban areas, which they believe characterizes China as a developing country. In contrast, suzhi jiaoyu is seen as suitable only for developed countries with abundant resources; thus, yingshi jiaoyu must remain the dominant form of education in China as long as scarcity persists. Notably, no users mention “common prosperity” or any government initiative as a potential solution for improving wealth distribution or resource allocation, nor as a pathway to introduce a curriculum capable of replacing yingshi jiaoyu. This absence highlights a critical gap between state rhetoric and public confidence, suggesting limited belief in the government’s ability to address the fundamental societal challenges that Xi claims he will address.
User 18: “As a policy that involves hundreds of millions of people, education has never been judged by how many problems it has, but whether it is suitable for national conditions … China’s national conditions determine that fairness is the first priority; reflected in education where yingshi jiaoyu must be the mainstream. There must be a clear selection criterion and a baton – the gaokao – otherwise prestigious schools will permanently become the prerogative of wealthy groups.” [193 upvotes]
Discussion and Conclusion
Zhihu discourse reveals significant dissonance between the state rhetoric surrounding suzhi jiaoyu and users’ opinions. While the CCP frames suzhi jiaoyu as a vehicle for transformative growth, users believe suzhi jiaoyu will exacerbate problems such as inequality and limited social mobility. Their concerns about the implementation of suzhi jiaoyu in China’s current context reflect a broader scepticism about the effectiveness of state-led reforms in achieving equitable outcomes.
What is striking is the unexpected focus of users’ criticism: the state itself. Traditionally, authors have argued that the concept of suzhi has been weaponized in both popular and state rhetoric to stigmatize working-class groups.Footnote 69 Consequently, suzhi jiaoyu has been anticipated to deepen classist attitudes within Chinese society, with its curriculum – centred on the cultivation of suzhi – likely to intensify disadvantage. However, my study uncovers a more radical shift in users’ opinions. Zhihu discussions of suzhi jiaoyu empathize with and defend poor students, focusing on the inequalities perpetuated by its introduction. These inequalities, in turn, are framed as emblematic of the state’s failure to acknowledge and address entrenched class-based and regional disparities. Pessimism surrounding suzhi jiaoyu stems from the very social problems it was designed to alleviate, including unemployment, hyper-competition and economic stagnation. These issues have eroded users’ trust in the state’s capacity to deliver meaningful reform, with the prospective shortcomings of suzhi jiaoyu serving as symbolic of this failure. Several underlying factors contribute to this widespread disillusionment.
First, the frequent use of the term “class solidification” implies users’ awareness of deepening class disparities during the period in which most posts were published. From 2012 to 2019, wage growth in the formal economy outpaced China’s GDP, while wages stagnated in the expanding informal sector.Footnote 70 Despite frequent protests, the state offered limited support to this burgeoning working class in securing timely pay.Footnote 71 More recently, the popularity of the internet slang, “unfinished kids” (lanweiwa 烂尾娃), which borrows from a colloquialism denoting unfinished housing projects following China’s property market collapse, describes another “new social class” of long-term unemployed youth.Footnote 72 Zhihu users have appropriated discussions of suzhi jiaoyu to express discontent with these widening inequalities. While they do not openly criticize the Party, users’ convictions that inequalities between “rich” and “poor” groups will undermine suzhi jiaoyu implicitly challenge the state’s narrative of China’s potential for progress and equality under initiatives such as “common prosperity.”
Second, considering the Party’s failure to address growing inequalities, users place significant emphasis on the education system as a pathway for upward social mobility. Although Chinese citizens have long viewed exam-oriented systems to be fair, the strong reverence for yingshi jiaoyu on Zhihu is particularly noteworthy.Footnote 73 The idea that wealthier students can manipulate the curriculum to their advantage reveals users’ understandings of inequality in resources and income in China. In the current economic climate, where the stakes of upward and downward social mobility are especially high, yingshi jiaoyu is increasingly idolized by netizens as a more reliable means of providing the poor with some hope of success.
Third, economic conditions also increase the curriculum’s unpopularity, owing to rising nationalist sentiment. Users have criticized the state’s departure from the gaokao and yingshi jiaoyu, which are perceived as distinctively Chinese due to their unique historical origins. Although learner-centred curricula have been trialled in China’s neighbouring countries, suzhi jiaoyu is almost exclusively equated with the US model, a perception that most likely stems from state rhetoric.Footnote 74 This perceived Western alignment has ignited a nationalist backlash, with suzhi jiaoyu perceived as inappropriate for China’s regional inequalities and relatively low level of modernity. This, again, reinforces support for yingshi jiaoyu and its potential to promote social mobility for poor and rural groups. It also implies a lack of faith in Xi Jinping’s modernization efforts to transform China’s socio-economic outcomes ahead of the universal implementation of suzhi jiaoyu.Footnote 75 The coexistence of Zhihu nationalism with state criticism supports recent research that views online nationalism as an impetus for anti-state sentiment.Footnote 76 Pro-yingshi jiaoyu users criticize the state for failing to meet their radical demands to fix class and regional inequality.
This study suffers from several limitations. First, one finding is that suzhi jiaoyu is misunderstood because users are unsure about how it will be implemented. Many of the analysed posts predate the widely publicized 2021 “double reduction” policy, which explicitly linked suzhi jiaoyu to the limiting of homework and private tutoring opportunities.Footnote 77 It is, therefore, uncertain whether confusion around suzhi jiaoyu persists. Also, this is the first study to examine online opinion on suzhi jiaoyu using grounded theory and it should be complemented by further research to enhance validity. Future work might include large-scale sentiment analysis across platforms to quantify opinion trends, and ethnographic studies to assess whether offline views align with online discourse, especially given potential censorship of more extreme posts.
Still, the discussions examined in my study have the potential to change the course of suzhi jiaoyu implementation. Official bodies in China have used online discussion as an impetus to revise reforms. This includes Shenzhen’s education authority, which revised its suzhi jiaoyu performance requirements after being criticized online for discriminating against poorer students.Footnote 78 If more official bodies are to incorporate online discussions into their revisions of suzhi jiaoyu, they will need to address social class disparities. Even initiatives such as “common prosperity,” which are promoted as efforts to reduce socio-economic disparities, avoid using terms like “social class” in official documents. This omission aligns with the state’s narrative that China is rapidly transforming, deeming explicit acknowledgement of class divisions unnecessary.Footnote 79 However, the gap between the CCP’s optimistic rhetoric and the opinions expressed on Zhihu raises critical questions about the legitimacy and effectiveness of the state’s policies in tackling socio-economic challenges. Without directly addressing these disparities, the CCP risks further eroding public trust in its ability to deliver equitable and inclusive solutions, something that Zhihu users have established as a prerequisite to state support. As the first study to examine online discourse on curriculum reform, this research opens the way for others to follow, leading to an increasing acknowledgement and influence of online opinions on educational policy.
Competing interests
None.
Olivia FINE graduated with an MPhil in education, globalization and international development from the University of Cambridge.
