Rigging the daddy race

INSIDE the red-lacquered door of No. 39 Wenhua Lane in central Beijing is an old-style single-storey home built around a small courtyard. Its owner, an elderly man in a vest, sits on an upturned bucket near a jumble of cooking pots; a pile of old cardboard rests atop a nearby shed. Next to the man, two estate agents hover at the entrance to a room just big enough for a bed, a wardrobe and a rickety desk. They say it costs 3.9m yuan ($630,000). At 353,990 yuan per square metre, this makes it pricier than posh digs around New York’s Central Park—and it does not even have its own bathroom and kitchen. It is, however, close to the state-run Beijing No. 2 Experimental Primary School, one of the best in the city.

Until recently, that would have had little bearing on the price of the room. For years it has been officially required that admission to a school be based solely on how close a child lives to it. Schools have paid little attention. Backhanders and connections have counted for much more. So too have entrance tests, designed to exclude the less able (unless they were rich—those with inadequate scores could always buy places). In March, however, the Ministry of Education stamped its feet again: by the beginning of the new school-year in September, all primary-school students and 90% of those in junior secondary-schools must attend the school closest to their registered home address (some state agencies will still be allowed to reserve places for children of employees). Schools appear to be taking this latest order more seriously than previous ones.