Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

Tsinghua, one of China's top universities, initiated its own affirmative action program recently in a bid to find talented students from remote, poor and ethnic minority areas. The university plans to reduce the required grade of the college entrance examinations for these disadvantaged students, 60 points at most, to pave the way for their access to China's most renowned university. The requirement is that the students and their parents should have an agricultural hukou, a segregational household registration system. Tsinghua, along with other top universities, has seen the percentage of students from rural areas plummet over the last decade. Affirmative action is always designed to make up for social disadvantages in the name of fairness and justice. But sometimes, they may backfire and be misused by the already privileged. It is not a wild guess that someday, Chinese urban students, who have a strong family background but aren't that academically bright, will try to figure out how to get their own agricultural hukou.