It was harder on her widowed mother. Although China has made great strides in its educational system over the past 50 years, high costs are driving millions of rural children to drop out of school–or not to start at all. Since the mid-1980s, Beijing, keen to wean localities off state funding, made village and township governments responsible for as much as three quarters of school budgets. Local authorities in turn foisted education costs onto farmers. Now as many as 4 million primary-school children like Zhuo Ma drop out every year.
This crisis is about more than lost opportunity. Beijing needs to find jobs for tens of millions of young peasants who can no longer make a living off the land. But even if the jobs themselves are created–as low-tech industries move from the coast into the hinterland–a generation of uneducated kids will not be qualified to fill them. The rural education deficit is perhaps one of the most worrying signs that the economic disparities between China’s cities and countryside may become permanent. “China is considered one of the most successful countries in educating its population,” says Maki Hayashikawa, education officer for UNESCO in Beijing. But when it comes to schooling in the countryside she concedes that experts “find a different reality.”
That reality sometimes mirrors the corruption found in cities. In many villages, local officials weigh farmers down with a wide array of fees to recoup budget shortfalls–some of which line party bosses’ pockets. The Beijing Evening News reported recently that schools in far-western Xinjiang province charged students a “fresh-flower fee,” a “drinking-water fee,” a “hardworking-teacher fee” and a “bicycle-watching fee,” among others. “We all know it’s unfair, but local governments just don’t have the money to support rural education,” says Ren Chunrong, a researcher at the China National Institute for Educational Research.
Ironically, rural schools may have been better off prior to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the late 1970s, when tuition was free under China’s planned economy. In a popular book published last year, “Telling the Premier the Truth,” Li Changping, a former village party secretary in Hubei, revealed that only 20 percent of the children in his native village were attending secondary school, far fewer than during his own generation 30 years ago. Many–including Li–lay the blame at the feet of the central government. Only 2.5 percent of China’s GDP goes to education, way below the 4.1 percent average for developing countries. As a percentage of GDP, Brazil, Malaysia and Mexico all spent almost twice as much on education in recent years. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji’s promise to raise funding to the 4 percent level by 2000 has fallen flat since the economy slowed down.
Chinese education officials are, admittedly, trying to make the grade. Parents in some poor areas are now paid a few cents a day–at the end of the term–if their children attend school. Three years ago Anhui province reined in the ability of local officials to charge suspect fees, switching to a simplified tax system that is easier for Beijing to monitor. Local officials say it has greatly reduced the burden on peasants, and this year it will be tried in 21 other provinces. If it works, Zhuo Ma and millions of other rural children may finally learn about more than life on a farm.
