As a member of the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference for several terms, she said, “I have been an educator for nearly 40 years and devote myself to it. The subject concerns thousands of families, especially parents. As a focus on the whole of society, the education budget accounts for a main part of educational reform.”

Chen began by saying that state educational budget kept increasing over the last five years with 1,494 billion yuan allocated in the 9th Five-Year Plan Period, amongst which the amount for 2001 was the most budgeted, reaching 463.7 billion. The final budget for 2001 represented 3.91 percent of GDP, the highest since the summer of 1989.

Yet, China’s education budget remains at a relatively low level with for example, an average educational input in 2001 being only 356 yuan per capita. Proportionally, China is inferior to some developing countries in terms of budget to GDP ratio e.g. India is 4 percent.

“What I want to express is that more money is urgently needed from the state,” Chen said.

“A lack of budget has prevented the healthy and speedy development of our education sector and created serious problems with too many additional costs in our schools. There are a number of things that need immediate attention such as the enforcement of compulsory education; adequate support for educating the poorer members of society; properly paid teachers; school and university buildings repaired and rebuilt if necessary as so many of them and their facilities are completely out of date; greater recruitment in the universities and greater support for young lecturers including better pay. In addition to there being a lack of money, unreasonable budget and distribution problems, there are considerable problems with management systems too,” she said.

Chen Hong has therefore made some suggestions addressing these problems as the outline for her proposal:

First, she hopes that laws will guarantee one percent growth in budget for education annually as laid down by the State Council for 1998 to 2002 until such times as society has reached a level of affluence and primarily that China could be able to attain a budget ratio to GDP of somewhere between 6-8 percent for the educational sector.

Second, make laws to enable an input quota from local government. Where richer areas have to input money into education in line and proportion with state investment, poorer areas should be supported by government subsidy in order to guarantee that children finish nine years of compulsory education.

Third, make laws to encourage and regulate private education, attracting sponsors from all levels of society and creating opportunities for educational investment; advocate individual education endowment, making regulations to ensure awards and compensations for donations; authorize eligible private universities to give a state-permitted diploma which will enable their survival and subsequent development.

Fourth, make laws to regulate all kinds of charges and fees for all schools, monitoring the normal spending of this money, and implement the prevention of illegal charging and embezzlement again with specific laws.

Fifth, launch a government fund to help poorer areas and poorer students complete their education. The fund must be managed by its own department.

Finally, to set up a system to strictly supervise and monitor the special funds earmarked by the state for educational purpose, to prevent and punish embezzlement and ensure the fair distribution of these funds to schools at all levels.

“In order to make our country strong, through science and education, as the basic principle of our nation, and to build an affluent society, we have to put into place a powerful educational mechanism. As such I propose to draft a ‘Law on Educational Input’ in order to safeguard the sound development of an educational sector,” Chen Hong said.

(China.org.cn by Staff Reporter Dai Fan, translated by Li Liangdu, March 18, 2003)