Basic Education
 
 
China's basic education includes pre-school education, nine-year compulsory education from elementary to junior high school, ordinary senior high school education, special education for disabled children, and education for illiterates.
There are more than 200 million elementary and high school students in China. Together with pre-school children, they account for one-sixth of the whole population. For this reason the Central Government has given priority to development of basic education as a key field of infrastructure construction and educational development.
 
In recent years, senior high school education has developed steadily. In 2003 the enrollment was 7.52 million, 3.1 times that in 1988. Today, the national gross enrollment in senior high schools is only 42.8 percent, much lower than that of developed countries.
 
The Central Government has invested special funds to improve conditions of elementary and high schools around the country. Some school buildings have been built and expanded, and some crumbling school buildings have been rebuilt. The per-capita educational fund for elementary and high school students has greatly grown. Teaching and research equipment, books and documents in schools have been updated and replenished every year. The goal of the development of China's general basic education is to get close to or reach the level of a moderately developed country in 2010.
 
 
Higher Education
 
 
 
Enrollment in higher education in China continues to expand. From 1999 to 2002, the enrollment increased from 1.6 million to 3.2 million. In 2003, the total enrollment in ordinary schools of higher learning throughout China was 3.82 million, 62,000 more than the previous year. Schools of higher learning and research institutes enrolled 269,000 post-graduate students, 66,000 more than the previous year. In 2004, the whole scale of enrollment of post-graduate students will be further enlarged, the planned enrollment being 330,000, an increase of 22.7 percent from 2003.
 
Various reforms in the higher education system have been carried out in recent years. A project to create 100 world top-level universities was started in 1993. Today, 708 schools of higher learning have been merged into 302 universities. Among them, the Central Academy of Arts and Design was merged into Tsinghua University; and Beijing Medical University came together with Peking University. Merging of schools of higher learning has deeply reformed the management system of higher education, optimizing allocation of educational resources, and further improving the teaching quality and school standards. More than 30 universities have received the support from a special state fund to support their entry into the top world ranks.
 
Schools of higher learning have improved their research strength, making more obvious contributions to the economic construction and social development of the country. By strengthening cooperation between production, teaching and scientific research — schools of higher learning are speeding up the turning of scientific and technological research results into products. By the end of 2003, 43 scientific parks had been built around the country in places like Beijing-based Tsinghua University, East China's Fujian-based Xiamen University and Zhejiang-based Zhejiang University.
 
 
Teachers
 
 
 
The Chinese government has been making efforts to raise teachers' social status and living standards. To improve teachers' quality, the government started the National Program of United Network for Education of Teachers, which aims to modernize teachers' education with education information, provide support and services for teachers' life-long learning through the network of teachers' education, network of satellite TV, and the Internet; improve the quality of elementary and high school teachers through large-scale, high-quality and high-efficiency training and continuous education. At present, among faculties of schools of higher learning, professors and assistant professors account for 9.5 percent and 30 percent respectively; young and middle-aged teachers are the main force, teachers under age 45 and under age 35 making up 79 percent and 46 percent of the total faculties respectively. Teachers in institutions of higher learning also have scientific research to do. They are the vital contingent in scientific research, knowledge innovation and scientific and technological innovation. In the schools of higher learning around the country, there are altogether 280 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ("CAS"), accounting for 40.7 percent of the total number of CAS academicians; 234 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering ("CAE"), accounting for 35.3 percent of the total number of CAE academicians. In 1985, September 10th was designated the Teacher's Day, the first such day to honor a profession.
 

Tertiary Education
 

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, an important governmental effort has been to eliminate illiteracy and popularize compulsory education. At present, the national net enrollment rate in elementary schools is 98.58 percent, and the gross enrollment rate in junior high schools has reached 90 percent. This compares to 1949 when only 20 percent of school-age children were in school, and 80 percent of all adults were illiterate. Today illiteracy among the young and middle-aged population has decreased to less than 5 percent, and the nine-year compulsory education basically has been established in the areas where 90 percent of the country's population live.
 
The past ten years have seen the fastest development in education in China. Ten years ago, for example, few institutions offered an MBA (Master of Business Administration). In 2003, some 62 schools offer MBAs, enrolling some 30,000 MBA students. International professional degrees like EMBA (Employed Master of Business Administration) and MPA (Master of Public Administration) also are offered. As regards the MPA degree, the State Council Degree Committee has authorized 47 Chinese institutions of higher learning to offer the degree, and some 7,700 students have been enrolled at present.
 
International cooperation and exchanges in education have increased year by year. China has the most students studying abroad in the world. Since 1979, some 582,000 Chinese students have studied in 103 countries and regions, among whom 160,000 have returned after finishing their studies. Meanwhile, the number of foreign students studying in China has also increased. In 2003, there were 86,000 students from 170 foreign countries studying in China's universities.
 
Education in China thrives in part because of increased investment. Since 1998, the percentage of funds allotted to education by the Central Government has grown 1 percentage point annually. In 2003, the national government fund for education was 349.14 billion yuan, accounting for 3.41 percent in the GDP, an increase of 0.22 percentage point from the previous year, being the highest since 1989 when this index was first monitored.
 
According to a development program of the Ministry of Education, the government will establish an education financial system in line with the public financial system, strengthen the responsibility of governments at all levels to invest in education, and ensure that the governments' financial allocation in education grows faster than their regular revenue. The program also sets a goal of trying in a relatively short time to make educational investment account for 4 percent of the GDP.  For non-compulsory education, China has a system of sharing costs with students by charging tuition at a certain percentage of the educational cost. Meanwhile, to ensure education for students from families with economic difficulties, the Chinese government offers scholarships, work-study programs, subsidies for students with special economic difficulties, reduction of or exemption from tuition, and state student loans.
 
The government is committed to providing more and more educational opportunities as demonstrated in a plan of the Ministry of Education whereby in 2020 for every 100,000 persons, 13,500 will have a junior college education and about 31,000 will have senior high school diplomas; the percentage of illiterate or semi-literate population will go down below 3 percent; and the average schooling of the whole population will increase from eight years of today to 11 years.
 
 
Private Education
 
 
 
The government supports private educational organizations. The Law on Promotion of Private Education officially came into effect on September 1, 2003. By the end of 2003, there were 60,000 private schools of various kinds and at various levels, with a total enrollment of 11.16 million. Among them, there are 1,202 private institutes of higher learning (not including the 133 private schools of higher learning qualified to grant degrees), with a total enrollment of 1.4 million. Private schools have opened avenues of cooperation with their foreign counterparts. Many foreign universities have entered China through cooperation with Chinese private schools, enriching China's education and opening new channels for studies.
 
 
Special and Vocational Education

 In  China, the government has always attached importance to special education. A series of laws and regulations have been issued to ensure disabled people's right to receive education. Today, there are 1,655 schools of special education around the country, with 365,000 students; 1,029 vocational training institutes for disabled people, 2,898 ordinary vocational training and educational institutes that also admit people with disabilities; more than 1,700 rehabilitation training organizations for children with hearing impairments, which have trained and are training more than 70,000 children. In 2003, more than 3,000 students with disabilities entered general schools of higher learning.
The Law on Vocational Education was issued in 1996. Vocational education embraces higher vocational schools, medium technical schools, technical schools, vocational high schools, employment training centers and other adult technical training schools and social training institutes. To make vocational education more in line with the demands of readjustment of economic structure and urbanization, in recent years the government has readjusted, reformed and developed vocational education in the orientation of employment, focusing on construction of two major vocational education projects - cultivating skilled workers urgently needed in modern manufacture and services, and training rural laborers who are moving into cities and towns — to meet the sharply increasing demand of the society for high-quality, skilled workers. To accelerate the development of vocational education in western areas, the state has built 186 vocational education centers in impoverished counties in western areas with the government bond.
 

With thanks China.org.cn