Yao Yang: “Meritocracy” is a good thing in principle, but when carried to an extreme, it becomes a “rat race”.

【Editor’s Note】

As 2024 comes to a close, we pause to reflect on the past and listen to the echoes of stories and voices. With the hustle and bustle around us, we look back and forward with沉淀后的眼睛.

Will time give us answers? Perhaps, more answers lie in the adventures of everyone’s life, where there are struggles, regrets, growth, hope, and沉思.

Today, Headlines Today and The Paper have co-organized the “When We Talk about 2024” annual speech event, which took place on December 16th at the东方艺术中心. The speakers, including Zhang Yufei, Zeng Meihui, Liang Yong’an, Mao Jian, Wang Yilin, Chen Nianxi, Fang Li, and Yao Yang, gathered with 300 audience members to seek spiritual exploration and find common experiences. In this uncertain era, we see differences and connections.

We will陆续 publish the recorded speeches for our readers.

Good evening everyone! I am very happy to have this opportunity to discuss topics such as anxiety,内卷, and躺平 with all of you. I see that most of the young people here have experienced or are experiencing anxiety.

I teach at Peking University, where we recruit about 3,000 undergraduate students per year, and Tsinghua University recruits 3,700. But how many students are there in the entire country taking the college entrance examination? They are already at the top of the pyramid and should not have reason to be anxious.

During my time as dean of a national development research institute, I encountered a girl who was very anxious. She loved history in high school and was very good at it. She wanted to study history at Peking University, but her parents said that if she wanted to go to Peking University, she must first choose the Guanghua Management School, which is everyone’s first choice. Although the admission score for Guanghua is now lower, for a long time it has been admitting many top scorers from the college entrance examination. She had no choice but to apply to Guanghua and was accepted. Peking University has a good policy that allows students to choose a different major at the end of their first year. She wanted to pursue her passion for history, so she transferred to the History Department.

After being in the History Department for a year, she felt guilty for disappointing her parents and wanted to transfer again. This time she transferred to our National Development Research Institute, but she still found herself drawn back to her love for history because the students there were all transfers like herself. Her math skills were probably not as good as other students’, and she was also behind them in terms of academic progress, which added to her anxiety.

She asked me: “Dr. Yao, should I transfer back to the History Department?” So even this very excellent girl was facing a lot of anxiety. Of course, everyone has different sources of anxiety, and I also face challenges and anxiety myself. Anxiety is a societal issue.

Here we need to ask why people are so anxious? There are many reasons for this.

One reason is that we always say we want to put down our current troubles to pursue poetry and distance. But in fact, each of us is living in the present and in the midst of troubles. Even if you reach your dreams or the person you love, once you are together, you will find that you are faced with daily routines. So each of us lives in the short term rather than the long term.

In the long run, a country’s economic growth rate will inevitably come down when your income reaches a certain level. This is called “convergence theory” in economics, which means that as your income level increases, your growth rate will converge towards the growth rate of high-income countries. Another theory is “mean regression”, which means that a country’s economic growth rate will eventually converge to its average growth rate in the world. This is a law-like phenomenon that cannot be changed by historical laws.

The short-term factor is that China is currently in a major adjustment period. We often have a linear view of history, but in fact history is cyclical or at most spiral upward. Our economic growth has been fast during the past 40 years since the reform and opening up started in 1978. Everyone can unleash their abilities and talents during this period. However, we also saw many problems such as over-sized real estate sector and excessive commercialization and marketization of education which are not sustainable.

Starting from 2018, we began an in-depth adjustment which is necessary for our economy’s long-term development.

What I want to focus on today is that we have a tradition of “meritocracy” in China which means that if you are smarter or more diligent than others, you should get