It's worth noting that modern day China still has quite a bit of affirmative action. College entrance exam scores, for example, give bonus points to ethnic minorities.
I didn't know that, but I was aware that college applications are binned by geographic region of the applicant (i.e., before getting any applications, they decide "we'll have 200 from 山东, 100 from 北京, etc"). (numbers invented)
Do you have an english-language source for this? I'd be very interested to read about it.
