V. Citizens' Rights to Receive Education
Over the past few years, Chinese citizens' educational level has
continued to rise. Statistics show that by 1996, there were 646,000
primary schools nationwide, with an enrollment of 136.15 million pupils,
an increase of 11.2 percent over 1990; there were 80,000 middle schools
with a total enrollment of 57.397 million, a jump of 25.2 percent over
1990; there were 1,032 universities and colleges, with a total of 3.021
million students, up 46.4 percent; universities and colleges for adults
numbered 1,138, with the enrollment standing at 2.656 million, a leap of
59.5 percent; and the number of secondary vocational schools in various
forms at various levels stood at 18,600, with 10.879 million students, an
increase of 66.7 percent. We may say that China has established an
educational system which can basically guarantee citizens' rights to
receive an education.
China has in place a set of legal systems to guarantee citizens' rights
to get an education. After the Education Law of the People's Republic of
China was promulgated in 1995, the Law for Vocational Education of the
People's Republic of China was promulgated in May of 1996, stipulating
that citizens have the legal right to receive vocational education, thus
further perfecting the legal educational system. Based on this, the
government adopted various measures to ensure that the citizens enjoy
their right to get an education. According to figures from the State
Statistics Bureau, in 1995, there were 18.36 million children between the
ages of six and 14 who did not study in schools, a decrease of 14.51
million compared with the number in 1990 when a census was taken. The
rate of children in the 6-14 age group who did not study in schools
dropped from 18.62 percent in 1990 to 8.38 percent in 1995, a decrease of
10 percentage points. Primary education is now universal in more than 90
percent of China's populated area, and the enrollment rate for children
at primary school age is 98.81 percent. The rate of graduates of primary
schools entering junior middle schools is 92.62 percent. By 1995, the
number of illiterates had dropped to 145 million, and the rate of adult
illiterates had dipped to 16.48 percent. The rate of young and adult
illiterates had dropped to 6.14 percent. In 1996, an additional four
million young and adult illiterates learned to read and write.
The Chinese government attaches great importance to the need to help
university students with financial difficulties complete their study. It
has adopted measures to aid these students through scholarships, loans,
funding for part-time work and part-time study program, allowances and
exemption or reduction of tuition fees. The central government has
allocated special funds to aid students with financial difficulties. From
1994 to 1996, the allocation reached more than 440 million yuan. Many
regions and departments have earmarked special funds to aid these
students.
To guarantee citizens' rights to receive education and improve the
scientific and cultural quality of the nation as a whole, the country has
planned to make the nine-year compulsory education universal and
basically wipe out illiteracy among the young and adults by the year
2000. To do so, the Chinese government has actively adopted a number of
measures. In 1996, an additional 457 counties, cities and districts in 26
provinces and autonomous regions, having a population of 190 million, or
16.4 percent of the population of the whole country, met the demand to
make the nine years of compulsory education universal and basically wipe
out illiteracy among the young and adults. So far, an accumulative total
of 1,482 counties, cities and districts, covering 50 percent of the
population of the whole nation, have reached the goals.
Since 1983, the Chinese government has established, in succession, four
special government subsidy funds to make compulsory education universal
in old revolutionary base areas, areas inhabited by minority ethnic
groups, remote areas and poor areas, and to support vocational education,
teacher-training and the education of national minorities. In addition to
the government-controlled added city education fund, which is some 300
million yuan each year, the funding has been mainly used to support the
development of education in poor regions. The government has decided to
allocate a special fund of 3.9 billion yuan from the central budget
between 1995 and 2000 to focus on poor counties recognized by the
``National Plan for Poverty Relief.'' Also, supplementary government
allocations will come from local budgets at various levels. An estimated
10 billion yuan in total will be poured into the program. The fund will
be mainly given to poor counties recognized by the Plan and part of the
money will go to provincially recognized counties with economic
difficulties and poor development of primary education. The priority will
be given to ethnic minority regions in using the fund. Moreover, the
``Hope Project,'' which has been enforced for many years, showed marked
new progress in 1996. Statistics show that the project received
nationwide donations totalling 286 million yuan in 1996, which helped
build 1,560 ``Hope'' primary schools and aided 290,000 dropouts. Over the
past seven years, the ``Hope Project'' has received an accumulative total
of 978 million yuan of donations, which has been used to build 3,634
``Hope'' schools and aided 1.549 million dropouts.
The Chinese government has made great efforts to develop education for
the disabled. By the end of 1996, the country had built 1,426 compulsory
special education schools, with an enrollment of some 321, 100 blind,
deaf and retarded students. The number of such schools and the number of
disabled students increased by 91.15 percent and 345.97 percent over the
1990 figures respectively.
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