Notes:
Besides the gaokao prep starting from middle school, and taking at least 12-14 hours a hour to prep for it each day and it being mentally strenuous and seemingly decisive to your career,
the narrator talks about how the Gaokao varies per province and apparently
depending on how high your city/province's GDP is, it may be easier compared to other provinces
Other than that, though, he talks more about societal issues rather than political ones, so I think he's at worst, a good-faith Chinese lib, even considering his reddit account, which has little political activity...
Also, I've heard there are other comparable hard exams which are not necessarily hard as the Gaokao, in the comments, such as Brazil and India, thoughts on that as well
To any libs around here:
If you lemmy libs want to wander on here, I'll politely tell you which instance you're in and tell you to go back your mother's skirts....
As I guy who lived in China for 9 years as a 老外, I passed elementary school and for unforeseen reasons could not continue my stay in the country. In elementary, at least in my time, it was tougher than that of western schools, I was in a regular Chinese school and there were teachers who hit their students with rulers, but with time it smoothed out and I saw it less and less. Speaking of GaoKao, yeah, it’s fucking insane, last time i have talked to my old classmates I only have been able to do at weekends because only then does she(in her case) have time for that. I think the whole thing starts even before high school, in middle school, where the students start to get prepped. China is not solo in this one though, for example Russian ЕГЭ(and post Soviet countries in general) are also hard and matter a lot for your possibilities to get into a good uni without having to pay with your soul. Chinese case, is in my opinion, just eastern over-achieving, which should be made easier for the sake of poor students. In Russians case, it is the consequences of a broken education system.