ABSTRACT
he polemics that often made educational questions appear as zero-sum issues played out between 'moderate' and 'radical' forces in the Chinese leadership have disappeared from China's newspapers. The issue is the structure and future development of secondary education. The great variation one finds in rural education stems from the rather limited direction and control provided by the central authorities. The Cultural Revolution, with its purge of moderate elements in the leadership, enabled the radicals to reshape the complex educational structure of the 1960s. The death of Mao Zedong and the removal of his radical supporters led to a total repudiation and dismantling of the Cultural Revolution educational reforms. Promotion within the educational system is dependent on examination performance. Considering the importance accorded university entrance in China, as well as the radical critique of the pre-Cultural Revolution educational pyramid, it is interesting to examine how much inequality has crept back with the return to quality, diversity and student options.
