In the Wake of Zhang Xuefeng: China’s Crisis of Trust in Educational Decision-Making — Jay Chau

Institutional change often lags behind technological change. As long as China’s gaokao remains fundamentally a one-time selection mechanism, and as long as university applications must still be completed within a highly compressed period, the demand for “quick decisions” will persist, as will the reliance on “clear answers.” Within such a structure, the individual remains the most efficient solution.

The sudden death of Zhang Xuefeng, a prominent Chinese online commentator and consultant on university admissions, recently drew large crowds to his funeral, with mourners reportedly forming a procession stretching for several kilometres. His death has once again brought a figure who had long occupied the centre of public debate back into the national conversation.

Public assessments of Zhang Xuefeng have often focused on the sharpness of his rhetoric, the utilitarian nature of his advice, or the controversies surrounding his business model. Yet to stop at a judgement of the individual is to miss a deeper question: **Why does China’s education system repeatedly produce “star advisers” whose personal judgement becomes the centre of trust, while struggling to build a stable, institutionalised system of educational counselling?**

To understand this phenomenon, we must first return to the process of university application itself. In China, choosing where and what to study is not simply a matter of selecting from available information. It is a highly concentrated and high-stakes decision point. For most families, the application process determines not only which university a student will attend, but also, to a significant extent, their future career trajectory, choice of city, and even possibilities for social mobility.

The problem is that this crucial decision is often made within an extremely short window. Choices that have accumulated throughout years of education are compressed into a matter of days, or sometimes even hours. Yet the information needed to support such decisions remains highly fragmented. There is no unified, transparent and verifiable framework capable of explaining the real differences between institutions, the career paths associated with different majors, or the structural disparities in opportunities across regions.

Under these conditions, families can neither rely entirely on publicly available information nor devote enough time to conducting their own in-depth research. They are therefore forced to seek certainty in the midst of uncertainty. When the system itself cannot provide a stable framework for interpretation, reliance on individual judgement becomes almost inevitable.

It was within this environment that Zhang Xuefeng’s rise became possible. His value lay in his ability to compress complex structures into clear conclusions. Through highly personalised language, he translated implicit rules concerning university rankings, the popularity of different majors and employment prospects into judgements that families could quickly understand and act upon.

In essence, he was filling the gap left by the system. He served as an information integrator, a translator of risk, and, to some extent, a proxy decision-maker. In an environment defined by uncertainty, someone capable of providing clear answers will naturally attract trust and gain influence.

It is at this level that a deeper structural logic becomes visible: **when institutions have yet to develop a stable capacity to explain and guide, society naturally turns to a form of trust in which people substitute for systems.** The individual is no longer merely someone who offers advice, but gradually becomes amplified into something that can itself be relied upon as a system.

Yet this also means that the model is inherently dependent on individuals. Once trust is built around personal experience and personal authority, it becomes difficult to standardise the underlying methodology, let alone turn it into a replicable professional system.

When One-Time Decisions Undermine Professional Services

The contrast with educational counselling systems in Western countries is revealing. In the United States and the United Kingdom, university admissions counselling is often provided by schools or professional institutions. The service typically extends across multiple stages of a student’s development. Its core is not a single “star adviser”, but a stable system encompassing long-term student records, multidimensional assessment, systematic matching of students with educational options, and sustained guidance over several years.

The crucial difference lies in the institutional structure. China’s gaokao places a single examination at the centre of the selection process, concentrating a vast number of educational decisions into one moment. Such a structure naturally limits the role of long-term counselling and process-based assessment. It is far more likely to create demand for individuals who can provide a clear answer at a critical moment.

The market structure reinforces this tendency. University application consulting in China is often sold as a one-off service. Families purchase decision-making advice within a short period and then quickly exit the relationship. Such short-cycle demand encourages service providers to build strong personal brands in order to establish trust as efficiently as possible, rather than investing in long-term institutional capacity.

The deeper difference also lies in the structure of trust. In an environment where institutional transparency is limited and information systems are still developing, people tend to place greater trust in identifiable individuals than in abstract systems. This is less a question of whether people “trust people more” than a reflection of a stage in which society has not yet developed sufficient confidence in systems themselves.

“Star Advisers” Are a Structural Product

Seen from this perspective, Zhang Xuefeng was not simply an exceptional individual who happened to emerge at the right moment. He was, in a sense, a product of the system itself. His existence reflects not a deviation from the logic of China’s education system, but an extension of it.

In a high-risk, high-uncertainty decision-making environment, society will inevitably seek out individuals capable of providing certainty. And once such individuals emerge, they will continue to be amplified.

That is why even when one person leaves the stage, the role itself does not disappear. As long as the underlying structure remains unchanged, new “Zhang Xuefengs” will continue to emerge. Their formats, language and methods of communication may change, but the function they serve will remain.

It is important to note that information technology is already beginning to change this landscape. Educational data are increasingly being organised and platformised. Information about universities, graduate destinations and individual majors is becoming more transparent, while artificial intelligence is changing the way people access information and make decisions. The informational advantage once held by individual experts is gradually being eroded.

But institutional change often lags behind technological change. As long as the gaokao remains fundamentally a one-time selection mechanism, and as long as university applications are still concentrated within a short period, the demand for “quick decisions” will not disappear. Nor will the reliance on “clear answers.” Within such a structure, the individual remains the most efficient solution.

A genuine transformation may therefore need to begin at a more fundamental level: making educational information more systematic and transparent; developing comparable data frameworks for universities and academic disciplines; introducing more substantive career and educational planning during secondary school, so that decision-making begins earlier; and gradually expanding forms of multidimensional assessment, allowing educational choices to move from **“single-point judgement” to “process-based judgement.”**

Only when decision-making is extended over a longer period, information becomes more structured, and trust gradually shifts from individuals to systems can a genuine professional counselling system take shape.

From this perspective, China’s repeated production of figures like Zhang Xuefeng is not because there is a shortage of potential successors. It is because, under the existing structure, **this is the most efficient answer available.**

The key to changing the situation, therefore, is not to search for the next “star adviser”, but to enable the system itself to become worthy of trust.

*Originally published in Chinese by Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore) on 31 March 2026.*

——————