Infatuation with gaokao champions is not healthy

A top Asian university recently dropped a bombshell when it announced a bumper crop of 21 top scorers in the gaokao, the fiercely competitive Chinese national college examination, will be enrolled in September.

While marveling at the Hong Kong university's ever increasing attractiveness - this year's intake includes 11 provincial champions and 10 city champions from a biggest-ever pool of more than 12,000 applicants from the mainland - people are worried about a perceived decline in the competitiveness of the elite mainland institutions against their rival from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Such angst is misplaced, however. In the number of gaokao champions admitted, any other school pales in comparison with Peking University and Tsinghua University, the two top mainland universities that attract hundreds, even thousands, of gaokao champions each year, if you count in all urban localities in the country.