On May 2, 2019, A-share closed Hong Kong stocks opened, but today the screen is full of A-share company, step Pharmaceutical (603858.SH).

Recently, the biggest admissions scandal in American history has exposed many American celebrities, and with the escalation and spread of the incident, the scope of its involvement has expanded from the United States to the country. Zhao Tao, founder of domestic pharmaceutical listed company 603858.SH, was involved, according to the report.

According to foreign media reports such as the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Mail, Zhao Tao and his wife hooked up with William Rick Singer through a financial adviser to Morgan Stanley, the main figure in the recent college enrollment fraud scandal that shocked the United States. He helped Zhao Tao's daughter attend Stanford University as a sailboat specialty.

Relevant materials that Zhao Yusi broadcast live on DouYu International Holdings Limited in 2017 were also dug up, when DouYu International Holdings Limited introduced her as "sweeping the US college entrance examination and being admitted to Stanford University with a score of ACT33 and 111TOEFL."

According to the report, Zhao Tao bribed Stanford University's sailing team coach with 500000 dollars, treating Zhao Yusi as a sailor and creating fake sailing profiles for students. The student has been expelled from Stanford University.

According to public information, Zhao Tao is the 53-year-old Singaporean chairman of step Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. he has been chairman of the company since 2001 and is now a director of step step (Hong Kong), Shoucheng International (Hong Kong) and Dade Holdings.

Buchang Pharmaceutical, located in Heze, Shandong Province, made its debut as a "Chinese magic doctor": in 1992, at the "International Symposium on traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture towards the World" in Singapore, Zhao Tao gave a live performance of acupuncture treatment: 20 minutes later, he miraculously stood up a patient who had been paralyzed for six years.

The incident caused a sensation in Singapore, and Zhao Tao won the reputation of "Chinese magic doctor". It is said that during his stay in Singapore, Zhao Tao earned 900000 US dollars in 90 days with his excellent medical skills, earning the first bucket of gold in his life.

In August 1993, Zhao Tao returned home and started a business with his father Zhao Buchang.

Buchang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. belongs to the production industry of proprietary Chinese medicine, which is mainly engaged in the research, development, production and sales of proprietary Chinese medicine. Its main products are related to the field of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, as well as other areas such as gynecological medicine.

Step Pharmaceuticals was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on November 18, 2016. in terms of market capitalization, the Zhao family surpassed the Zhang family of Weiqiao Group to become the richest man in Shandong. However, judging from the share price of step Pharmaceuticals, the richest man should come and go quickly.

According to its performance data, step Pharmaceutical achieved total revenue of 13.665 billion and net profit of 1.888 billion in 2018, an increase of 15.29% over the same period last year; earnings per share was 2.13 yuan. In the first quarter of 2019, the company achieved a total revenue of 2.883 billion and a net profit of 284 million.

Zhao Tao once said, "for children, you must remember that you can't give money, it will be a waste." Everyone will not have any equity, but let them start their own business and build their own business. "

Turning around, he spent 6.5 million dollars for his daughter Zhao Yusi to enter Stanford University.

Some of the rich second generation also like to say that they start their own businesses from scratch, just as Zhao inculcated them.. Both start their own businesses from scratch, and the starting point for the rich second generation and ordinary people is separated by a $6.5 million pass to a famous school.

1

Singh's Secret

William Singh, who founded three full-time private tutoring companies for students, has a clear positioning of his business:

"all we have to do is send the children of the richest families in America to college."

In 2014, he published a book called getting admitted to your favorite University (Getting In: Gaining Admission To Your College of Choice). In the first chapter, he wrote: "this book is full of secrets."

What on earth is the secret of this book?

As we all know, there are two ways to enter a famous school in the United States, one is "through the front door", that is, you are so powerful that you can get in, and the other is "through the back door", which is to donate money to the school, such as Trump's handsome son-in-law Jared Kushner. His father donated $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998.

William Singh found the third door, called the side door. He assured a client that the donation would cost 10 times more than it is now, and that his own method would be more effective than going through the back door.

It is true that Singh helped the children of more than 750 families to go to college. Zhao Yusi was just one of them, but he was the best shooter, and the second best shot came from China, which cost 1.2 million US dollars.

Had it not been for one thing in April 2018, Singh might have achieved his ambitious goal of sending the children of America's richest families to college, and the head of Zhao could enjoy the May Day holiday.

In April 2018, FBI visited the home of billionaire Morri Tobin, who FBI accused of stock price manipulation and securities fraud.

The good things in the world are not strong, and the colored clouds are easy to disperse and the glass is brittle.

Tobin's comfortable billionaire life is over.

However, Tobin, accustomed to a comfortable life, shuddered at the thought that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. Just like Singh said, there are "side doors" for the administration of justice in the United States, just like what Singh said about the enrollment of elite schools.

Billionaire Tobin flew to Boston to see the federal prosecutor. Confession is lenient, but Tobin wants more than that. He wants more forgiveness. Tobin gave the prosecutor bigger bait: he spent $450000 to enroll his daughter at Yale University, which was asked for by Rudolph Meredith, a women's football coach at Yale University.

On April 12, 2018, at the behest of FBI, Tobin set Meredith up and met Meredith at a Boston hotel with a tape recorder. After winning Meredith, FBI went down this line and finally caught William Singh, the trader of the biggest recruitment fraud in the United States.

In March 2019, the US Department of Justice indicted 50 people, including parents who offered bribes, as well as college sports coaches and related staff who took bribes. Most of them are not short of money, status celebrities, including many financial executives, leading lawyers and Hollywood stars.

Singh's secret came to light.

His side door is aimed at the discretionary space in the admissions rules of American colleges and universities.

One is a learning disability, which requires separate invigilation. (note: learning disability is a disability with American characteristics, which in most cases is referred to as stupid or lazy in China). Under the separate invigilation, there is more room for manipulation, so please be depressed to the examiner, please the gunman and so on.

The other is students who specialize in sports, which is similar to our policy of adding points in the college entrance examination. American society attaches great importance to the performance of school teams in sports competitions. Because of the huge size of the sports market, school team coaches have a lot of power in American colleges and universities, such as monopolizing the enrollment power of "sports talents". Like Zhao Yusi, who claimed to be the "top student in the American college entrance examination" on the live broadcast of DouYu International Holdings Limited, was actually entered as a sailor, but she actually had no experience in sailing.

2

The income of a famous school

William Singh discovered the "side door", but his side door needs a steady stream of parents for it to work. Anxious parents are not Chinese specialties, and American parents are equally anxious that their offspring will be abandoned by the times.

Before the 1980s, the United States was the golden age of "tolerant upbringing". At that time, a college degree did not affect people's income gap to a great extent. Fewer parents will spend 18 years meddling in their children's studies, so children at that time have a lot of freedom.

But since the 1980s, the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse, and the seeds that led to the reversal were actually planted from the autumn of 1958 to the early winter of 1959.

Over the past few months, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments Inc and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor have made the same breakthrough on their own: the silicon wafer.

Until today, we do not see the far-reaching social impact of this revolution.The silicon revolution is fundamentally different from the previous industrial revolutions, that is, it expands not physical strength, but intelligence.

The greatest achievement of the first two industrial revolutions was Ford's assembly line.The assembly line eliminates the personal talents of artists, craftsmen and craftsmen, but also promotes strange egalitarianism.Unskilled and uneducated people can work in factories. As a result, the wealth gap in the United States narrowed from World War II to the 1980s.

The silicon revolution is the opposite, with more individualistic and anti-egalitarian tendencies:That is, it restores the value of well-educated and highly skilled people. Not only thatSilicon wafers extend human intelligence and thus expand the geographical scope of human management, which is the basis for the continuous expansion of globalization.

The final result is the increasing professionalism of the social division of labor, accompanied by a sharp expansion of the income gap between college students and senior high school students. Since the 1980s, the income gap between college students and senior high school students has widened to 70%, and the rate of return on education is 50% higher than in 1950.

The behemoth of globalization not only runs over blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt of the United States, but even programmers in Silicon Valley can outsource their work to cheap programmers in India at any time.If you want not to be abandoned by the times, you can only climb up the ladder of value.

The anxiety of losing their jobs and the sinking of future generations goes hand in hand, forcing American families to invest in education. American parents spend 12 more hours a week with their children than they did in the 1970s, according to the survey. Aren't American parents busy today? Not at all.

On the issue of education, not only China and other Asian countries like cram schools, but also the United States. Other industries in the United States have struggled to recover since the recession in 2008, but the tutorial industry has grown by more than 50%. Behind the popularity of tutoring is the pursuit of elite schools by American parents. few parents can accept that their children are inferior to them.

It is this anxiety, superimposed by the benefits of elite schools, that gives William Singh a chance.

3

The cost of information

Of course, it is clear that for William Singh, had it not been for the Tobin incident, his future business position might have been to "send the children of the richest families in China to elite American schools", because Chinese parents pay much more than the deal price.

Among his clients, Boss Zhao and Boss Guo are the most generous spenders, one paying $6.5 million and the other $1.2 million, which is several times that of American bosses.

In particular, it is said that of the $1.2 million given by boss Guo, only 400000 went to Meredith, the women's football coach. Boss Zhao exaggerated even more. Of the $6.5 million, only $500000 was used to bribe coach van der Mohr.

How did William Singh connect with these Chinese families? According to the Wall Street Journal, Singh has close relationships with a number of financial institutions, which recommend Singh's university consulting services to its Chinese clients.

The networks of these financial institutions spread all over the world and have a wide range of contacts. Its significance for wealthy families in China lies not only in helping them manage their financial affairs, but also in educational planning and philanthropy. Things like Zhao Siyu are tied up by Morgan Stanley.

However, judging from the price paid, these financial institutions should have fooled Chinese families, taking advantage of information asymmetry.

The college admissions system in the United States is complex and gloomy.

Although China has been gradually increasing other weights for the rest of its life, the most important thing for most people is the college entrance examination score, a single score index. In the United States, the vast majority of undergraduate enrollment is based on a number of indicators, including SAT/ACT scores, high school scores, college preparatory course scores, extracurricular activity performance, sports expertise, application documents and letters of recommendation.

The admission process of American universities with strong subjectivity, low transparency and unpredictable results leaves room for discretion, and parents who are familiar with the rules have more room to operate, some of which are still legal. Boss Zhao paid such a high premium, it is obvious that he is not very familiar with American rules.

Just as an important advantage in capital markets is the advantage of information, the same is true in these areas where there is room for discretion.

In terms of college admission indicators, China is too single, which leads to the pursuit of convergence, which is not conducive to innovation in the long run. The indicators of the United States are more comprehensive and conducive to the admission of multiple talents in universities.

Modern society tends to be pluralistic, so it is a general trend to add other factors to the admission index of colleges and universities, even if it brings a fair debate, after all, fairness is not necessarily the best for society as a whole.

This determines that more and more discretionary space will be added to the admission of Chinese colleges and universities. This discretionary space means a very flexible cost of information, including not only prices, but also legal boundaries.

For ordinary people, knowing the rules and how to play can make your efforts get twice the result with half the effort.

4

Conclusion

Everyone wants the best, and it is inevitable to compete for scarce university resources.

Chen Danqing said that there are three moral bottom line industries in a society, one of which is education. As long as education is excellent and fair, there will be hope for rise at the bottom.

But most of the time, it is too difficult to do this.

In order to achieve complete fairness, we can only strangle the talent of multiple endowments. However, these different talent endowments themselves are the greatest value of society and should not be erased by a single principle of social assessment.

Multiple assessment means that there is room for discretion, and it is difficult to balance a bowl of water.

There can only be a balance between fairness and efficiency. what the government needs to do is to punish people like Singh, while what ordinary people can do is to be as familiar with the rules as possible, get twice the result with half the effort and reduce the cost of admission to prestigious schools.