Being a chinese much older than you and in retrospective, the real problem in China education is the lack of first rate teachers who really understand the topic they are teaching.
Honestly exams are very weak once you really get the idea of what you are learning. I can absolutely know nothing about what I am learning and get a very high score in the exam. Richard Feynman also pointed this out during visiting years in Brazil. Students in China and Brazil suffer the same problem. There are first rate students, but without first rate guidance, most of them will be turned down to the levels of their teachers.