Getting up every morning is the hardest thing for 8-year-old boy Zhao Huan.

Since his school in Beijing starts at 8 am, Zhao has to rise at around 7 am.

The second-grader acknowledged that he often falls asleep on the back seat of his father's bicycle when he goes to school in the morning.

"I want to sleep a whole day if I have time," said the tired boy who has to practise the violin and study painting after school or during the holidays.

Huang Xianghong, a 16-year-old high school student in Nanning of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said she never goes to bed before 11 pm and has to get up at 6 am.

"There are endless classes in school and endless homework to do and reference books to read at home," said Huang.

Children and teens are getting less sleep than ever before.

A recent survey by the China Youth and Children Research Center shows that more than half of primary and middle school students said "good sleep is the dearest thing" they want.

The survey, conducted among 5,846 students in 10 major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing in the past two years, showed that 10.4 per cent of those under 12 years old slept less than eight hours a day. Among children aged 13-15, one-third slept an average of less than eight hours per day, revealed the survey.

This was much lower than doctors' recommendations that children and teenagers get at least nine hours of sleep.

The State education authorities called for giving students more time to sleep in its 1994 notice on reducing students' study burden.

The notice suggests primary school children get 10 hours of sleep a day, and middle school students nine hours of sleep a day.

However, the order has seldom been carried out as parents and teachers usually put great pressure on children and teenagers to make them study hard and leave them little time for relaxation.

Although some parents agreed that lack of sleep might impair their children's behavior, they cannot stop pushing their children forward under the country's highly competitive education system.

Roughly 50 percent of students responding to the survey said heavy homework burdens had eaten into their sleeping time, 24 percent said they cannot get enough sleep due to school starting too early, and another 12 percent said long journeys to school ate into their sleeping time.

Many primary and middle schools ask students to go to school at 7:30 am.

Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the city's top advisory body, found that proposals calling for "middle schools not to start so early" are among the top 10 suggestions it received last year.

The problem of a lack of sleep has become so serious that experts are worried that it will harm students' memory, thinking and even physical growth.

(China Daily March 12, 2005)