China's classrooms as a political
battleground By Yao Yuan and Zhu
Zhan
HONG KONG - To privatize education or to
charge fees - as much as possible, legal or not - has
become a burning educational and political issue, even
part of China's political battleground between the
make-money conservatives and the moderate reformers who
say education should be a basic right for all, from
kindergarten though college, if they can make the grade,
not the money.
Scandals involving China's
state-run education system have recently surfaced, one
after the other, and Chen Zhili, the state councilor in
charge of education policy, has become a target of loud
public indignation. Nowadays, education, clearly under
the control of the conservative "Shanghai Clique" headed
by military strongman Jiang Zemin, is a weakness of the
powerful in-group. Chen is a member of that group.
Vice Premier Huang Ju, a member of the Standing
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central
Politburo, presided over a conference on September 6 to
offer financial assistance to poverty-stricken college
students. China has about 12 million college students,
some 20% or 2.4 million of them from poor families,
Huang said. "A big number of these students have no
access to low-interest student-aid loans because some
local authorities are only playing at the policy [of
providing loans to deserving students] set forth by the
central government," he said.
Apart from the
difficulty in applying for student loans, many
universities and colleges are now bogged down in
blackmail scandals. Xi'an University of Science and
Technology demands selected candidates pay 20,000 yuan
(US$2,400) for matriculation letters that they deserve
and have earned, the Xi'an-based Huashang Daily
reported. Likewise, Xi'an University of Finance and
Economics charges - critics say "extorts" - 30,000 yuan
from students who already qualify for admission, China
Youth Daily revealed. Despite the high monetary
thresholds set by the universities, the entreaties of
students' parents for fairness and a break, the two
universities have not budged - money comes first. As a
last resort, the students blew whistle and told the
media.
Observers note that education - supposed
to be available to all and not at extortionate costs -
has long been under the control of the Shanghai Clique.
This faction includes Vice President Zeng Qinghong in
charge of human resources development, Vice Premier
Huang Ju and State Councilor Chen Zhili in charge of
education policies, to name a few. Therefore, some
critics say that the scandal-ridden educational system
has become a vulnerable spot for the clique and that
Huang chaired the meeting earlier this month in order to
fall on his sword, assume responsibility and avert
further investigation or pressure by reformist president
and CCP chief Hu Jintao and his ally, Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao.
During the conference, Huang called for
education leaders to assume the responsibility for
rectifying the problem, he proposed increasing state
expenditure to assist financially needy students and
schools, colleges and universities to fairly regulate
the variety of fees they charge. The meeting appeared to
be aimed at stifling more bad news about the educational
establishment.
The official Xinhua News Agency
recently described in detail the societal and economic
gaps on college campuses. In north China's Shaanxi
alone, financially needy students account for about 30%
of the total enrollment, and 10% of them are extremely
badly off. On average, these students typically can only
afford to spend 100-150 yuan a month. They tighten their
belts and take part-time jobs to pay for tuition, books
and daily costs. In sharp contrast, students from
well-off families throw money around on designer-label
clothes, mobile phones and other luxuries. The
constantly widening wealth disparity on campus has
undermined the self-esteem of the disadvantaged
students; their emotional and psychological health is
now a headache of many universities and colleges, Xinhua
reported.
What's worse, the financial gap begins
even in kindergartens, as Xinhua reported on September 6
when Huang chaired the education conference. In Taiyuan
city of North China's Shanxi province, even the nursery
schools are now divided into four strata: for children
of migrant workers, for those of regularly employed
workers, for those of employers, and for those of
officials. Obviously, the division accords with the
parents' income level.
"The present preschool
educational system ... will harm their mental health and
development," Xinhua said. To tackle the problem, China
should learn from countries that manage to impartially
secure the civil rights of all legal nationals to
receive free basic education, the report says.
From kindergartens to colleges, the polarized
educational system reflects the widening financial gap
between rich and poor nationwide; the gap is now being
recognized as a serious social and economic problem.
Although vice minister for education Zhang Baoqing has
strongly opposed commercializing and privatizing
education - he has vowed to maintain it as a pillar of
social welfare that "offers education to all capable of
receiving it" - his words sound more like wishful
thinking than a commitment. Extraordinary stories - like
those of skyrocketing tuition fees driving desperate
parents to commit suicide - hit the headlines nowadays,
more than ever before.
China's rocketing
national economy has resulted in a widening gap between
rich and poor and tuition and other school costs keep
rising every year. In the long run, if the trend
continues - and it seems to be doing just that - the
educational system will lose the last vestige of equity
and the sons and daughters of peasants and workers will
no longer be admitted to a system for the elite.
Opposition to privatizing and
'reform' When problems and malpractices are
brought to light in the national education system, the
notion of commercializing education - which is regarded
as the root problem - has become the target of public
criticism. Although the Ministry of Education has
disavowed any support for commercialization, Zhang
Baoqing recently conceded support for privatization in
parts of the nation.
"I can't deny that the idea
of commercializing education is popular in some places
and among some leaders and scholars. Some of them are
still trumpeting the notion even to date. For instance,
I've found some local authorities selling elite
secondary schools to individual buyers. I strongly
oppose it," Zhang said on September 2. This is the first
time that a senior education official even admitted the
existence of the notion.
"The Ministry of
Education has always been against education
commercialization, for education is the most important
element representing a fair and just society. Education
is a sublime social welfare offered to all capable of
receiving it. Commercializing education contradicts our
tenet of offering education, the interests of the
overwhelming majority and the fundamental principle of
our socialistic regime. Therefore, we must never take
commercialization. Once commercialized, education will
be ruined," Zhang reiterated.
At a press
conference held in January, Minister for Education Zhou
Ji clarified for the first time that "the Chinese
government has never made commercializing education a
policy, and will definitely maintain education as social
welfare".
However, the country has not reached
an across-the-board consensus on the issue. Han Lichi, a
well-regarded academic at Shanghai's Air Force Politics
Institute, once described an imaginary scenario of
education commercialization in his article, "A Simple
Probe Into Education Commercialization". To make
education a commercial business should follow the rules
of a market economy, he writes.
China's State
Council or cabinet promulgated the "Decision to Speed
the Development of Tertiary Industry" in 1992. It called
for most welfare institutions, including education, to
be transformed into for-profit enterprises. But later,
then vice premier Li Lanqing, in charge of education
policies, specified that elementary education in
particular must be preserved as a social benefit for all
Chinese citizens.
Six years later, the education
ministry, at the behest of Chen Zhili, former minister
of education and an important state councilor today,
initiated "The Plan to Develop Education in the 21st
Century". This aimed to commercialize the advanced
technology invented by universities and colleges by the
year 2010, but meanwhile it emphasizes that elementary
education should be maintained free for all.
Problems in the system First, a large
number of primary and secondary schools charge students
illicit fees apart from tuition. In Shanghai alone, an
inspection panel comprising 10 government departments
examined 150 local schools in 2002 and discovered that
72.4 million yuan (US$8.7 million) was being charged
illegally. That is only the tip of the iceberg.
Second, the controversial concept of a
"university city", an enclave comprising different
campuses, is also considered a form of
commercialization. Many domestic universities nationwide
have joined in university city projects in a bid to
raise funds. However, many projects are in financial
difficulties and plagued by scandals. For example, the
Oriental University City, located in central China's
Hebei province, is reported to have run up a huge debt
of 2.2 billion yuan. Commander-in-chief Jiang Zemin,
former president and former boss of Chen Zhili, once
presented an inscription in his calligraphy praising the
Oriental project.
Shortage of resources is a
persistent obstacle that impedes the country's
educational development. Recently, the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences released a report on the "Flow in
Contemporary Chinese Society", which points out that the
educational system is losing its equity, impartiality
and egalitarianism. In the early 1990s, China vowed to
increase the proportion of its education budget to its
gross domestic product (GDP) up to 4% - the average
level of developing countries in the 1980s - by the end
of the 20th century. Yet during the years that followed
the proportion kept falling, to 2.44% in 1996, but it
rebounded to 3.41% in 2003 - but still lower than the
average of less-developed countries.
Moreover,
the imbalance of resource allocation between urban and
rural areas is gradually depriving the lower social
strata of their opportunities to receive education and
training. Statistics show that the gross education
expenditure amounted to more than 580 billion yuan in
2002, of which some 77% was spent on urban areas
inhabited by less than 40% of the total population. In
other words, the 60%-plus rural population only got 23%
of the pie.
Today China has a school-age
population of more than 200 million. Education
authorities have planned to popularize tertiary, or
college education, following nine years of compulsory
education. Some observers say the plan is beyond China's
reach and capability. Therefore, while the education
system expands, the budget can hardly keep pace,
according to Shang Jiang, a well-known scholar at Daqing
Radio and TV University, in his thesis, "Education
Should Not Go Commercialized".
Of the education
expenditure for 2000, 25.4% was spent on tertiary
education, 6.6% on vocational schools, 29.42% on
secondary schools, 32% on elementary schools and 1.38%
on kindergartens.
In order to regulate the fees
charged by schools, the education ministry has set forth
a uniform standard. For instance, a rural primary school
should charge each student 160 yuan every two semesters,
and 260 yuan for a rural secondary school. The threshold
can be adjusted by the authorities according to local
conditions, but the fluctuation limits should be no more
than 20% above or below the original standards.
However, the current education cost-sharing
framework is uneven. According to a survey by the
Development Research Center under the State Council,
about 78% of the budget for compulsory education is paid
by town-level governments, 9% by county levels, 11% by
provincial levels and finally under 2% by the central
government. That has become the root cause of many
difficulties in popularizing compulsory education in
rural China.
China budgets about 140 billion
yuan (US$17 billion) for annual education expenditure,
accounting for 1.5% of the world total of $1.15
trillion. However, China has the world's largest
population of school age, which is about 214 million -
22% of the global population. That is to say, the
country educates 22% of the students on earth with only
1.5% of the world education expenses, Shang Jiang writes
in his thesis.
"China generated a GDP of about
10.48 trillion yuan in 2002, and then over 11 trillion
yuan in the following year. There are an estimated 45
million rural primary and secondary students in the west
of the country, so the annual compulsory education in
the west should cost 8.8 billion yuan pursuant to the
fee-charging standards made by the MOE [Ministry of
Education]. And that is only 0.81% of the 2002 fiscal
revenue of the central government. That is something the
central government can afford," said Lin Xing of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
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