University and college teachers have steadily increased their incomes and improved their living standard in recent years, according to a lawmaker from east China’s Fujian Province.
While deliberating the government work report delivered by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Chen Zhangliang, vice-president of prodigious Beijing University, said, “We teachers all have noticed a substantial increase over the past few years in government expenditures in the educational sector.”
Chen, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, said that a few years ago university teachers earned as much as taxi drivers or even less, thus feeling disappointed.
“Yet in the last a couple of years there has been no great change in tax drivers’ earnings, whereas the income of college teachers has risen by a big margin,” he said, adding: “At last we college teachers now can lead a decent life.”
(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2002)