[maxglute]

PRC has affirmative action points on gaokao for "underperforming" minorities, well it's been phased out to economically disadvantaged minorities last few years to mitigate privilege stacking. So system not incompatible with affirmative action, but even then tier2 PRC schools the affirmative action floor is still like 95th percentile tier1 closer to 99.9 percentile, i.e. not something that can be gamed like in US by 75th percentile SAT scores, athletics, donors, personality scores, diversity.

[dyauspitr]

How is underperforming/disadvantaged minorities not diversity?

Also, I don’t think there’s a problem with using athletics as a criteria for admission.

Other than that, I completely agree with you.

[maxglute]

>underperforming/disadvantaged minorities

Underperforming with a standardized test floor, i.e. for tier1 PRC universities this is lowering bar for minority to 99th percentile instead of 99.9 percentile. They filter before tertiary with programs that find all the high performing minorities in poor/disadvantaged regions and throwing them into subsidized boarding schools in wealthy provinces with better academic pipelines, i.e. ensuring they still enter university fully prepared instead of lowering floor to 80th percentile SAT math scores that on paper is good enough but in reality is borderline remedial stupid for university math. Hence PRC STEM has negligible drop rate vs west.

As for athletics, I think it's sensible for US who tightly coupled university economics with (some) sports that it makes sense for some athletes, but that's an... unusual arrangement.