Income, Education, and Life in Rural China

The Chinese educational system begins with nine years of universal, compulsory education. Educational reform after the tumult of the Cultural Revolution invigorated education, especially in urban centers. Educational policies are set by the central government and carried out in cities and municipalities throughout China. Of course, when an area is poor, its schools suffer. This is certainly the case in rural China.

Education and income illustrate the tremendous gap between people living in China's prosperous coastal areas and those who live in inland, rural China.

Context. Two-thirds of China's population—nearly 900 million people—live in rural areas away from the prosperous coast. And two-thirds of them have dramatically lower incomes and less education than their urban counterparts.

Headed to class at Youjian Elementary School, April 2009Rugged terrain, remoteness, and inaccessibility are conducive to low levels of economic growth, the prevalence of illiteracy, and scant investment in education, all of which has left vast regions of China greatly disadvantaged.* The Chinese government has set ambitious goals for changing rural China. But this change faces formidable challenges.

Here are just some of the factors that complicate efforts to close the urban-rural divide:

• Huge school-age population. The estimated 2010 school-age population in China is 355 million,** the largest in the world. In fact, it's larger than the entire population of the United States.
• Lack of land for cultivation. China has about 20 percent of the world's population but only seven percent of its arable land.
• Inhospitable geography. Vast areas of land in China lie above 4,900 feet, and the massive Gobi Desert in northwestern China covers about 500,000 square miles.

Chinese leaders are beginning to make huge investments in education, transportation, communications, and health care to help ameliorate the long legacy of poverty and illiteracy in rural China.

Education is a vital key. Persistent and deep poverty will not be changed without education. Parents value education more for their own children if they have been educated themselves. The Fund helps by making it possible for children go to school to avoid illiteracy and become models for their own children and grandchildren.

In the last 15 years, the Chinese government has adopted a number of policies to improve education in rural China, such as investing in infrastructure and changing education financing. While this is beginning to help, much remains to be done. It was only 20 years ago that 90% "of secondary schools fail to meet national standards for such basic facilities as chairs, desks, and safe drinking water."***

Overcoming Luodian County's legacy of persistent poverty and illiteracy will take decades. The Fund is helping with this. As Moore said, "when I first began to help in 1996, I realized quite quickly that I was not trying to resolve the vast economic disparity between urban and rural China. I simply wanted to help one child at a time, in one county, in the poorest province in China. That I could do."