Q: Basic education is vital to every developing country.
What is the current situation of basic education in China? How much
is invested in it, and can this investment satisfy the need of
basic education?
A: China is a developing country with a population of 1.3
billion. This is the fundamental reality of the country, and also
our major resource. If the quality of life is very low, the
population will be a heavy burden; if the quality is very high, the
massive population will be a rich resource and valuable treasure.
To turn the burden of a huge population into an abundant resource
and treasure depends on education.
Since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and
especially since reform and opening up in late 1978, China has
leapfrogged in pushing forward development of education,
essentially popularizing compulsory education and eliminating youth
illiteracy.
In recent years, China has made big efforts to invest in
education. It has adopted a policy of requiring governments at
every level to increase educational funds by 1 percentage point
every year they prepare a budget. The Central Government has taken
the lead and local governments have followed suit. With effort,
investment in education has grown from 2.45 percent to 3.41 percent
of the GDP, an increase of 0.9 percentage points in five years.
China's GDP has been rapidly increasing in recent years and the
investment in education is also increasing a lot. There are very
few countries with a per-capita GDP of US$1,000 that have
popularized a nine-year compulsory education system as we have
done. We run the world's largest education system with a relatively
small amount of money, and the education is of pretty good quality.
Of course, compared with the strategic role of education, as
something given priority in national economic development and
modernization efforts, such investment is far from enough. But to
further increase investments in education is the resolution of the
Chinese Government and also the desire of the whole Chinese people.
Within the next two to three years, China's investment in education
will account for 4 percent of its GDP.
However, we can't deny that the rapid development of education
will inevitably accompany many difficulties and problems, among
which the most salient one is the contradiction between people's
strong desires for good-quality education and an insufficient
supply of good-quality educational resources. Inadequate investment
in education continues to be a challenging issue. As a result, the
problem of casual charges still exists in some schools where
compulsory education is carried out.