Students in China have a first immense hurdle to clear, the gaokao or high exam. Doing well on the test means going to college.
This year, around 9.5 million high school students took the grueling, multi-day college entrance exam, competing for 6.5 million university positions.
Yong Zhao, a professor at Michigan State University and an expert, said that Chinese educators spend their careers "dancing within the shackles of the exam."
"Emerging countries like China have a lot of their economy geared not by education labor but by cheap manufacturing labor. Now, China must turn its population nation into a nation of human assets," Yong said.
The Chinese government has started to relinquish some of its control over the education system.
ABC World News reports that one major subject students must master is English. The number of people learning English in China is greater than the population of the United States.
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