Addressing a meeting in Beijing on Monday, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji urged the country to continue to implement the strategy of invigorating China through science and education in an all-around way.
The advancement of scientific and educational causes are crucial to China's efforts to "build a well-off society in an all-round way" and to its modernization drive, Zhu said at the 12th meeting of the state's leading group on science, technology and education. Zhu is director of the group.
He said the government has treated the advancement of scientific and educational causes as a priority for the past five years. To date, the group has debated 29 major issues and made a series of important pro-science and pro-education decisions.
Zhu also told the meeting that efforts to renovate dilapidated classrooms in rural primary and high schools must continue. Local governments will shoulder the bulk of the cost for the renovation. State subsidies will go mainly to impoverished areas in the central and western regions.
Vice-Premier Li Lanqing and Wen Jiabao also attended the meeting.
(Xinhua News Agency January 8, 2003)
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