-- Nathan Newman
Only the 'medically fit' can go to college, China decrees Source: The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) Published: 06/24/2001 Author: Damien McElroy
STUDENTS wanting to attend university in China next term will have to pass stringent new examinations first: not to test their ability for the courses that they want to sit but to judge their medical suitability and physical fitness.
Teenagers whose legs differ in length by more than two inches or whose spine is curved by 1.5 inches will be disbarred from courses as varied as geology, law and civil engineering. Anyone with colour blindness will be banned from sitting business administration courses, while those unfortunates diagnosed with cancer, epilepsy, high blood pressure or "mental disorder" will be prevented from enrolling altogether.
The new medical examinations are an attempt to "engineer" a stronger, healthier population free from physical and mental handicaps. Last week, millions of teenagers across the country lined up at hospitals to be certified by a doctor as fit enough to make the leap from school to university.
The new rules have forced many able and successful students who suffer from physical ailments to pull out of the education system in despair. Next month, the traditional Chinese period for entrance exams, is now being called "Black July" by disabled groups. The Chinese higher educational system is renowned for crushing the hopes and ambitions of more students than it elevates. There are university places for only about five per cent o f the student population, although some 20 per cent apply.
The Chinese authorities claim that, in view of the level of competition to get into college, the system should weed out imperfect applicants. A doctor involved in administering the medical examinations said the physically impaired were generally unable to cope with the demands of the education system. "How could they have made it to secondary school?" she said. "How can they study?"
Education officials have admitted that the new rules are designed to prevent the disabled from "clogging up" Chinese universities. "These days, no college is willing to take a disabled student," one university head told a Chinese newspaper. He said that allowing one disabled student in "only encourages more to apply".
"Once a college gets one, the media will publicise it, and then there will be more disabled students applying next year," he said. "Of course, the school should bear certain social responsibilities, but it's not a welfare organisation."
Even employees of the Chinese Disabled Persons' Federation concede that such viewpoints are understandable. "Universities have little experience in dealing with the disabled and hence have worries about educating them," said Li Dongmei, a deputy director of the education division of the federation. "Many do not have the facilities."
There have been few voices raised to object to restricting university entry to hale students. Chinese law requires the government to work actively to "raise the quality of the Chinese people". There is a continuing debate raging about how far the country should go towards removing the mentally deficient from the population.
There has been widespread acceptance of the maternal and infant health care law, a notorious piece of legislation that instructs citizens to avoid having "idiotic" children. The prevention of new births of an inferior quality has become a national objective that involves invidious controls on reproduction.
A nationwide screening process assesses the likelihood that pregnant women will give birth to retarded children. If medical tests determine that the risk is too high, officials will order an abortion that will often be forced on the pregnant woman. Li Peng, the former prime minister and the man behind the Tiananmen massacre, is known to be an enthusiastic proponent of the drive to limit the "inferior stock" among the country's 1.3 billion people.
The need to rid the Chinese population of its weakest links has been described by foreign scientists as taking up where Adolf Hitler's eugenics policies left off. But scientists in China claim that measures are needed to curb irresponsible breeding by the poorly educated or impoverished residents of the hinterland.
Whole villages, said Qiu Renzong, a professor of bioethics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, are populated by mentally retarded people who are the product of inbreeding or iodine deficiency, which is a problem across the vast North China plain, home to 400 million people.
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org