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Jianlu Bi
Being Chinese
Jianlu Bi

My family’s journey through China’s changing educational landscape

Amid falling births and policy adjustments, education for one of my children is a more joyous experience than it has been for the other

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Children take part in a bicycle race at the Second Experimental Kindergarten in Yantai High-tech Zone, Shandong province in 2024. Photo: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images
Jianlu Bi
Jianlu Bi is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy in Focus think tank at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and a research fellow at the Charhar Institute in Beijing.

As Beijing’s annual kindergarten and primary school enrolment season wrapped up in the summer, the mix of joy and disappointment among families was palpable. It brought to mind the dramatic evolution of China’s education system, as experienced by myself and my children.

I was born in rural China in the 1980s and education was always going to be my escape route. “Knowledge is power” was not a cliché; it was a creed my parents, though farmers, held dear. Their sacrifices, coupled with my own diligence, propelled me from a village school to a prestigious university education, ultimately leading to a fulfilling career and a transformed life.

Now a parent myself, I still have a front-row view of China’s educational landscape. My daughter, born in 2014, entered a system grappling with a population boom in Beijing – a battleground for the kind of intense, often pointless competition we now call “involution”.
Securing a kindergarten spot was an ordeal, a series of queues and interviews. Primary school admissions were even more cutthroat. Like many parents, I sold our apartment in Beijing’s Chaoyang district and relocated to the coveted Xicheng district, lured by the promise of superior educational resources.
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