Pilot schools in China are already using AI to grade children’s artwork, monitor their facial expressions during lectures, and screen them for psychological problems — and the Ministry of Education (MOE) wants schools across the country to follow suit.
I wonder if China is making the same mistake the us made: assuming throwing money at schools will increase education levels. The electronic blackboards makes me think of this the most. In Kyrgyzstan schools would buy these fancy blackboards but they wouldn’t have reliable electricity or internet and wouldn’t even have textbooks for students. Most importantly there wasn’t adequate teacher trainings. They assumed once they got this fancy équipement everything would be good. Would china make similar mistakes ?
«1,800 rural mothers and asked what they wanted their children to aspire to, over 95% said, “I want my child to go to college.” In China, a degree from an elite college doesn’t just translate to higher earnings — it unlocks better healthcare via the hukou system, cushy “iron rice bowl” 铁饭碗 jobs, and above all, social prestige.»
Above all "tiger" mothers have regarded sons as pension assets for several thousand years (social prestige is secondary). They do no care so much about whether education will make their child a better person or will benefit production of goods and services but simply about whether having a son as an official will guarantee them a comfortable retirement.
«No matter how popular it would be, Beijing is not interested in building a system where a college education is available to anyone who wants one.»
It would very unpopular actually in practice even in the short term because like in the UK, USA, etc. most of the graduates would end up in working-class jobs and many of them in manual working class jobs and this would be huge resentment ("overproduction of elites") by those graduates. But this would mean that that the big investment of their mothers would be wasted as their mothers would also be very resentful.
What has worked in the UK, USA, Japan, etc. has been giving the opportunity to women to build pensions accounts (whether private or public) instead of having sons as pensions assets. If women can count on financial pensions for retirement many will no longer bother with the effort and cost of bearing and raising sons, and many will no longer care whether they sons have a chance to become officials via a college degree.
While the author has clearly put significant effort into gathering a wide range of materials for this piece, the analysis seems to miss the most transformative aspect of AI education in China today. By focusing on niche "surveillance" pilot programs and top-down administrative projects, the article overlooks the ground-level reality: the explosive, bottom-up adoption of consumer AI.
The data speaks for itself. Doubao (ByteDance’s AI) recently announced that its daily API token volume has surpassed 120 trillion—a figure that now exceeds the estimated daily totals of both ChatGPT and Gemini combined. More importantly, the primary drivers of this massive volume are students.
The real "AI experiment" isn't happening in high-tech classrooms under government supervision; it’s happening on millions of personal smartphones. Doubao provides a completely free service with virtually no usage limits, meaning that a student in a remote mountain village in Hunan has the exact same access to world-class AI tutoring as a student in a major metropolis.
When hundreds of millions of students are already using AI daily as a tireless, free personal tutor, any discussion about "AI education" that fails to mention this platform is inevitably detached from the lived experience of Chinese families. The story isn't one of centralized control or "heartwarming photoshoots," but rather a profound, decentralized democratization of educational resources that is happening right now.
An excellent and thoughtfully written study. Thank you! Geremie
“Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.” (Emile Zola)
Not anymore I guess....
I wonder if China is making the same mistake the us made: assuming throwing money at schools will increase education levels. The electronic blackboards makes me think of this the most. In Kyrgyzstan schools would buy these fancy blackboards but they wouldn’t have reliable electricity or internet and wouldn’t even have textbooks for students. Most importantly there wasn’t adequate teacher trainings. They assumed once they got this fancy équipement everything would be good. Would china make similar mistakes ?
«1,800 rural mothers and asked what they wanted their children to aspire to, over 95% said, “I want my child to go to college.” In China, a degree from an elite college doesn’t just translate to higher earnings — it unlocks better healthcare via the hukou system, cushy “iron rice bowl” 铁饭碗 jobs, and above all, social prestige.»
Above all "tiger" mothers have regarded sons as pension assets for several thousand years (social prestige is secondary). They do no care so much about whether education will make their child a better person or will benefit production of goods and services but simply about whether having a son as an official will guarantee them a comfortable retirement.
«No matter how popular it would be, Beijing is not interested in building a system where a college education is available to anyone who wants one.»
It would very unpopular actually in practice even in the short term because like in the UK, USA, etc. most of the graduates would end up in working-class jobs and many of them in manual working class jobs and this would be huge resentment ("overproduction of elites") by those graduates. But this would mean that that the big investment of their mothers would be wasted as their mothers would also be very resentful.
What has worked in the UK, USA, Japan, etc. has been giving the opportunity to women to build pensions accounts (whether private or public) instead of having sons as pensions assets. If women can count on financial pensions for retirement many will no longer bother with the effort and cost of bearing and raising sons, and many will no longer care whether they sons have a chance to become officials via a college degree.
While the author has clearly put significant effort into gathering a wide range of materials for this piece, the analysis seems to miss the most transformative aspect of AI education in China today. By focusing on niche "surveillance" pilot programs and top-down administrative projects, the article overlooks the ground-level reality: the explosive, bottom-up adoption of consumer AI.
The data speaks for itself. Doubao (ByteDance’s AI) recently announced that its daily API token volume has surpassed 120 trillion—a figure that now exceeds the estimated daily totals of both ChatGPT and Gemini combined. More importantly, the primary drivers of this massive volume are students.
The real "AI experiment" isn't happening in high-tech classrooms under government supervision; it’s happening on millions of personal smartphones. Doubao provides a completely free service with virtually no usage limits, meaning that a student in a remote mountain village in Hunan has the exact same access to world-class AI tutoring as a student in a major metropolis.
When hundreds of millions of students are already using AI daily as a tireless, free personal tutor, any discussion about "AI education" that fails to mention this platform is inevitably detached from the lived experience of Chinese families. The story isn't one of centralized control or "heartwarming photoshoots," but rather a profound, decentralized democratization of educational resources that is happening right now.
> ... the Ministry of Education (MOE) released a white paper on AI for education. This MOE document proclaims ...
but that is an aliyun doc?
Fixed! Thanks for pointing this out.
In New York you’d have to pay 60k for the alpha school in china it’s a move to a diff area.