Coco Lee, Li Bai & the Chinese dream of meritocracy

An incident that has taken the Chinese internet by storm of late was the leaked video and audio recordings of the late Coco Lee and the emotional and physical abuse/bullying she received when participating in the Sing! China (Chinese version of The Voice, a reality singing competition TV show).

From mythological stories of rulers to the Imperial Exam system established in the 7th century, the Chinese has shown their relentless pursuit for meritocracy. Yet, as we see in the latest Coco Lee x Sing! China saga, meritocracy was just a distant dream, and a never-ending pursuit.

It’s an opportune time to look at the Chinese historical development that revolves around the idea of meritocracy, from the very beginning of myths, to the actual establishment that the Chinese has been proud of as a mark of meritocracy, to the situation we have on hand today where it appears that everything is back to square one.

BACKGROUND OF COCO LEE x SING!CHINA SAGA

In case you have not heard of it (here’s another English article by Time), I’m doing a quick summary of this incident below, before going into the historical aspect. Feel free to skip this section if you already know what’s going on!

In Oct 2022, Coco was invited by Sing!China to be one of the panel judges for the competition. She had 2 apprentices then, one who obtained 88.3 points but was unable to progress to the next stage while another group’s apprentice who obtained only 73 could (that’s actually quite a huge margin). So at that point she lost it and accused the producer/director of having an unjust system.

Bearing in mind, she was just recovering from her breast cancer surgery that happened on 17 Oct 2022. And in Feb 2023 she also had a surgery for her left leg (she had a congenital issue and underwent surgery as a kid, but it was aggravated in Oct 2022, likely because of the Sing!China incident). This directly affected her mobility permanently, and some argued that it might have cost her to go into even greater depression as she has couldn’t perform anymore.

The recent leak after her death was a 9-minute long audio recording of her addressing all the abuse that she received from Sing!China director/produce:

1. She raised the issue of fairness regarding the scoring of students and their ability to progress to the next level, and was told by the director that for 11 years none of the panel judges could change the rule. This might sound reasonable if it were a long-established rule except that she had been asking the programme team on the rules of the game and even until the recording they weren’t able to tell her what the rules were. Definitely a kangaroo situation there.
2. The video leak of her getting upset with the team put the programme in a negative light, so the programme team bartered with her. In order for her student who obtained 88.3 points to progress to the next level, she had to write a public social media post saying that it was a misunderstanding and all’s good. For the sake of her student’s future and progression, she sucked it up and did that post against her good conscience.
3. She had told the programme team and even gave them her X-ray of her leg injury, and requested for her other student to hold her on stage while they perform together. The programme team agreed, but they confiscated her student’s mobile phone so he had no way of knowing it (Coco sent messages to him about the arrangement), and they did not relay the message to him. During the performance, they intentionally had the student standing with his back facing Coco and moved him away to the other side of the stage. So Coco couldn’t stand and fell due to her injury while still singing the song (because she’s professional that way). It was only after the end of the song when the student turn to find her, that he realised that she had fallen. It is an obvious attempt to sabotage and humiliate her on stage.
4. The producing team tried to forcefully remove Coco from her seat—they got physical with her.
5. Coco exclaimed that for 28 years of her singing career, she had never experienced such humiliation and bullying.
6. She spent a lot of time and energy and ruining her health in the process of recording in hope that she could help these budding singers/hopefuls with their career in singing. Yet the programme cut away all of her scenes, as if she didn’t care about the show, and she didn’t put in any effort.

The repercussion was huge but obviously the Chinese internet is great at filtering/removing/reducing the influence/impact. Because the greatest irony is that a Chinese American singer who identifies as a Chinese and the first Chinese singer to sing at the Oscars, the NBA opening ceremony, and at Michael Jackson’s concert, probably never experienced such level of humiliation and bullying as a minority even way back in the early 2000s when the entire climate was less ‘woke’ and empathetic towards the minority race. Yet, in her own ‘home base’, amongst those she considered her own, over issues that were just and fair, she had to kowtow to the bullies with nobody else standing up for her.

Even after her death and the verified accounts & leak of her mistreatment, the only ones standing up for her were largely the general populace, maybe only the general populace understood her helplessness against the monolith of power.

TRACING HISTORY—THE MYTH OF CHINESE MERITOCRACY

Moral Stories

Myths and traditional stories often conveys the values that are deemed important by the society, and for the Chinese, stories of a benevolent, just and unselfish ruler has always been around.

One of the iconic one was the story of ancient Sage Kings— Yao, Shun and Yu (circa 3rd millennium BCE). The popular succession story of these 3 revolved around the meritocratic idea of passing their throne to an outsider who was deemed the most capable. The reality was most likely that they were overthrown by the latter, but it sounds better for both sides (the former one appears selfless by not passing on to own heir, the latter sounds like he is capable and the right person for the throne) for the story to be that it was a natural progression.

Systemic Change

2nd Century BCE

A system of nomination and recommendation was established, and based on whether someone was perceived to be filial, and uncorrupt. If these people were perceived to be so, then they would be nominated and go through a form of examination to determine their eventual suitability.

This also explains why the Han dynasty tombs of this period were exceptionally extravagant—so it’s easier to make a show of one’s filial piety and eventually be recommended to be an official after all the nomination and examination rounds.

There was a popular saying that mocked the hypocrisy and failure of the system that goes like: Nominated scholar doesn’t know his books; Nominated filial and uncorrupted official lives apart from his father.

6th Century CE

As society progressed, naturally the Chinese realised that relying on kinship, relationships and personal recommendations in your own pool of elites isn’t going to get you the best guy who can do the best job for you. So some time around the 7th century, the first emperor of the Sui dynasty established the earliest form of the Imperial Examination system. Not to serve the public and help them with social mobility mind you, in case there is some confusion/hope there.

So the examination system became the main selection process instead of the nomination and recommendation.

By the Tang dynasty (7th century), it had become more established in process and anyone (except for the slave caste and merchants) in principle could join the examination without any prerequisite of age, social status, family background, etc. Although there is still also the recommendation route, which gave commoners the hope of being recognised despite their humble background.

A Chinese animation film released this year ‘Chang’Ann (2023)’ 长安八万里 centred around the entire concept of the turning point of the Tang dynasty, and its failed attempt at meritocracy. One of its protagonists, shared the same surname as Coco, and he is THE most famous poet in Chinese history—Li Bai.

In principle the Imperial Examination system should be just, but in practice it wasn’t so. It still largely relied on recommendations of the examiner who would recognise the candidate’s name through other social interactions, or top officials who got to know these hopefuls through “Passing the Scroll”. This was also mentioned as a key plot in the animation.

This particular failure of system to pick out the ideal candidates was echoed in the 2023 Chinese animation film Chang’An as talented poets were rejected from the system, and also in our Yanzilou Project back in 2020:

The Chinese has always pride itself on their established examination system in the fancy name of meritocracy and social mobility. But if you peel off the shiny veneer of slogans and ideals, you would realise that even in China’s most glorious era—The Tang dynasty, in the 8th century, there had always been different rules and playing fields for the well-connected and the common folks.

Later Refinement

Some time during Emperor-Empress Wu’s era (first and only female emperor in Chinese history), she added the rule of making the examination script submissions anonymous to the examiners. And further down the road during the 11th century or so during the Song dynasty, all the scripts were re-copied by independent officers to ensure that even candidate’s handwriting were not known to the examiners.

These were sincere attempts to minimise unfair competition in the system and to better ensure the principle of meritocracy. Of course that meant much more processes, bureaucracies and resources were dedicated to it.

MERITOCRACY AS A JOKE

So the idea of meritocracy is extremely ingrained in the consciousness of the Chinese. And as Coco famously said in her leaked audio, “We are Chinese. We know what’s right from wrong. We are very smart and we are rational. We can tell the difference between good and bad singing”.

With competitions like Sing!China, the audience and the society at large were offered an illusion of meritocracy. So when it was later also revealed by some insiders that every time someone progresses, there’s a hefty price tag behind this option to progress, sold to the budding singers by the programme team (starting from around 100k RMB per session), it smashed their hope of a meritocratic society. Bringing them back to thousands of years ago where the doors to a promising future aren’t for average folks who couldn’t afford it.

THE CHINESE OR AMERICAN DREAM?

When the idea of American Dream came about, the Chinese have been dreaming of it since their ancestors’ time for thousands of years without realising it.

And now, it appears that they can continue to dream on.