Combining personal narratives with decades of research, a vivid account of how the gaokao—China’s high-stakes college admissions test—shapes that society and influences education debates in the United States.

Each year, more than ten million students across China pin their hopes on the gaokao, the nationwide college entrance exam. Unlike in the United States, where standardized tests are just one factor, in China college admission is determined entirely by gaokao performance. It is no wonder the test has become a national obsession.

Drawing on extensive surveys, historical research, and economic analysis, and informed by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li’s own experiences of the gaokao gauntlet, The Highest Exam reveals how China’s education system functions as a centralized tournament. It explains why preparation for the gaokao begins even before first grade—and why, given its importance for upward mobility, Chinese families are behaving rationally when they devote immense quantities of money and effort to acing the test. It shows how the exam system serves the needs of the Chinese Communist Party and drives much of the country’s economic growth. And it examines the gaokao’s far-reaching effects on China’s society, as the exam’s promise of meritocracy encourages citizens to focus on individual ability at the expense of considering socioeconomic inequalities.

What’s more, as the book makes clear, the gaokao is now also shaping debates around education in the United States. As Chinese-American families bring the expectations of the highest exam with them, their calls for objective, transparent metrics in the education system increasingly clash with the more holistic measures of achievement used by American schools and universities.

Ruixue Jia is Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego, where she codirects the China Data Lab. Hongbin Li is Codirector of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions as well as Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He was previously Professor of Economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Claire Cousineau, a writer and a former researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, is pursuing her MBA at Duke University.