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Doug Young
Doug Young

Corporate China | Weibo: Execs ruminate on college exam, news app

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High school students throwing their teacher into the air during a graduation ceremony after the 2014 college entrance exam of China in a school in Chongqing. Photo: AFP
Doug Young

The microblogging realm was relatively quiet over the past week, as all of China took a moment of silence for the thousands of high school students who had to suffer through the annual torture session also known as the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, held over the weekend. A few tech executives reflected on the gaokao on their microblogs, though none had too much positive to say about an test that places huge pressure on students and is often criticized for its emphasis on rote memorization. Meantime, a couple of other tech executives were full of skepticism and just a touch of envy for a news app that made headlines after it attracted a whopping $100 million (HK$775 million) in new funding less than two years after its founding.

The gaokao is always a major headline-grabber when it's held each year, with countless stories in the media on all the preparation that students and schools take for the two day test that was held over the past weekend. The exam determines which colleges students can attend, and the entire nation goes into a sort of silent period over the two days, similar to the silence in hundreds of test centers across the country.

That silence may have been partly behind the relative quiet in the microblogging realm among tech executives, some of whom probably had friends and relatives taking the exam. A few actually took time to comment on the test, including executives from newly listed security software maker Cheetah Mobile (NYSE: CMCM) and online cosmetics seller Jumei International (NYSE: JMEI), as well as an executive from telecoms equipment maker ZTE (0763.HK; Shenzhen: 000063).
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Cheetah's CEO Fu Sheng was highly critical of the exam, as he recalled the many unpleasant memories about the test's unfairness and all the pressure that he and others felt when he took the gaokao 19 years ago. Fu was also quite philosophical, giving his current view that the test was really just a small thing in his life despite how big it seemed at the time -- words that perhaps might console some of today's students who didn't perform well.
Jumei co-founder and vice president Dai Yusen reminisced about one of the essays he wrote on the exam when he took it a decade ago in Hunan. ZTE vice president Zeng Xuezhong also recalled the nervousness he felt, and related the strategy that he and his classmates used to try and calm their nerves. At least everyone can relax now that the exam is finally over, though many students are undoubtedly still suffering from anxiety over how they performed and what it will mean for their future college careers.
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Outside the anxiety-ridden gaokao, tech executives from struggling online clothing seller Vancl and newly listed e-commerce company JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) were  skeptical and perhaps just a touch envious over a massive new funding round for ByteDance, developer of a news app called Today's Headlines. The app's owners announced earlier in the week that they raised a handsome $100 million in new funding -- a huge amount for a company that was only founded in August 2012. Media also reported the investment valued the company at an even more impressive $500 million.

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