The mainland leadership's decision to remove unpopular education minister Dr Zhou Ji over the weekend may seem abrupt, but it was not unexpected. It's actually a welcome development. As the central government maps out educational reforms for the medium and long term, Zhou's removal may signal a new start.
At 63, he was two years short of the retirement age for government ministers. He will now become deputy party chief of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a substantially less important post.
Zhou, who received a doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo, had been education minister since 2003. When the National People's Congress met last year to elect a new cabinet for a five-year term, he won only 84 per cent of the votes - the lowest among all ministers and an unusually low rate from the rubber-stamp legislature.
His departure had been expected since last year, when State Councillor Chen Zhili, the top official in charge of education and Zhou's immediate boss, was sidelined and made a deputy chairman of the NPC, largely an honorary title. Chen, a close ally of former president Jiang Zemin, was replaced by Liu Yandong, closely linked to President Hu Jintao .
But politics may just have expedited Zhou's removal. More important, the leadership may use his replacement to signal its renewed determination to step up education reforms at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with the education system, particularly rampant financial and moral corruption at universities.
The mainland's education system is seriously lacking in many ways. If not fixed properly, it could stall the country's modernisation drive. But to be fair, many of its education woes date to long before Zhou became education minister. What's more, some of the problems were beyond Zhou's capability to fix.