China boosts spending on education in rural areas

Asian Economic News, Jan 31, 2005

BEIJING, Jan. 27 Kyodo

China's spending on rural education shot up 72 percent last year to 10 billion yuan (about $1.2 billion) in a bid to improve school conditions, Education Minister Zhou Ji said Thursday.

The money is being spent on building safe schools, student housing and distance-learning programs this year, Zhou said.

Poorer rural Chinese families cannot afford tuition, and some need their older children to help with farm labor or housework. Up to 900 million of China's 1.3 billion people live in the countryside.

The ministry has put more rural students into classrooms, Zhou said, but much work remains. Eight percent of central and western areas of China, which include most of the poorer rural areas, have not spread compulsory nine-year education, Zhou said.