China Plans to Cut School Fees for Its Poorest Rural Students

[Jon8503]

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: March 13, 2005

BEIJING, March 12 - China will begin eliminating rural school fees this year in response to growing criticism that the education system is increasingly corrupt and discriminates against poor rural students.

The new policy, announced last week by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at the opening of the annual National People's Congress, will begin by removing fees for 14 million students in the country's poorest counties, and will continue expanding until 2007, when all rural students will receive a free primary education.


The program is part of a broader domestic agenda outlined by Mr. Wen to address increasing inequality in China, where urban residents earn three times as much as farmers and other rural residents. Education fees are particularly crippling for rural families, who often survive on only a few hundred dollars a year.

"Without fairness in education, there can be no fairness in society," said Zhou Hongyu, a delegate to the National People's Congress, China's legislative body. "The main injustice in education now is the imbalance between cities and the countryside."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/asia/13china.html

[izzie]

1. They are also going out for the best students. so have to do this

That country is going to go far. Just wait and see

[Jon8503]

2. Yes, I wish we would work harder at finding a way for good quality

education for all of our citizens. Personally, I think with the global situation as it is in today's world, we should find a way for any high school graduate student, if he has the qualifications, to be able to go on to a 4 year college. I see no reason with the wealth and know how in our country we can not afford to provide a 4 year college opportunity to any student who is willing and wants to go. Instead with the tuition costs rising, we are shutting people out except for the wealthy. In doing this we are losing out on some bright people.

We have to start doing what China is doing and providing a equal education to all concerned.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

3. Surprisingly progressive

China's always been an enigma to me. They have an authoritarian government and system, yet recently their leadership's been pushing a lot of progressive initiatives on education, AIDS treatment, and environmental protection. Perhaps most importantly, there are more open disagreements among Communist Party apparatchiks, which traditionally-- as seen in e.g. South Korea and Mexico-- is the seed for a transition from a single-party state to a multi-party republic, however flawed. This in fact seems to be the usual course for most democracies in the world-- economic advances first, followed by gradual political liberalization. In China, among other things, this would greatly help to defuse tensions with Taiwan. For our part-- it's rather embarrassing than authoritarian China has pushed this initiative on widespread free education, while we in the US have nothing remotely equivalent to it.