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BEIJING, June 11, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/

An old Chinese saying goes "to dig a well, you begin with a shallow pit and

eventually get a deep one." The sentence means that a long journey starts with

a single step. It comes from "Liu Zi · Chong Xue," a book written around 1,500

years ago.

Chinese President Xi Jinping viewed education as a first and fundamental step

to "dig the well" of eradicating absolute poverty in China, which was achieved

in 2020.

Preventing the transfer of poverty across generations

The Yangjialing Fuzhou Hope Primary School in Yan'an, northwest China's Shaanxi

Province, was renovated with donations from Fuzhou City, capital of

southeastern Fujian Province in 1995 after Xi Jinping, then Party chief of

Fuzhou, encouraged local entrepreneurs to help build schools in the country's

underdeveloped regions.

"Don't let the kids lose at the starting line," Xi said when visiting the

school in 2015, highlighting education as a key factor in the development of

poor areas.

The school, which at one time had only one teacher and a classroom in a cave,

has undergone rapid changes with support from the government and society. It

has now a four-story building equipped with modern multimedia classrooms, and

students are also able to take a free lunch at school.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education (MOE) published in 2020 show China's

total investment in education, including free meals and improving school

facilities, had increased by more than eight percent annually in the previous

three years.

According to the white paper on China's poverty alleviation issued in April

2021, the country has renovated 108,000 schools to strengthen the provision of

nine-year compulsory education in poor areas since 2013.

"Reducing poverty must begin with reducing ignorance. Therefore, giving rural

children a good education is an important task in poverty relief, and also a

crucial means to stop poverty being passed on between generations," Xi has said.

Narrowing education gap

Regarding education equality as the basis of social equality, Xi Jinping has on

many occasions stressed the importance of narrowing the gap in educational

resources and quality between rural and urban areas.

In the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), China's central budget allocated

around 749.5 billion yuan ($114.6 billion) worth of subsidies to support

compulsory education, and 90 percent of the funds was invested in rural areas,

according to the MOE. For instance, students from poor rural household were

provided with living allowance from the government to support their study.

The 2021 white paper on China's poverty alleviation says there have been no

dropouts in the countryside due to financial difficulties. Nine-year compulsory

education is now available to all children from rural poor households, and the

completion rate in 2020 was 94.8 percent.

As China goes digital in education, internet infrastructure has also bridged

the gap between urban and rural education – primary and middle schools across

the country all have internet connection.

Students at the Yangjialing Fuzhou Hope Primary School are now able to

experience the "internet classroom" through which the school uses the internet

to share real-time teaching with partner schools in big cities.

Favorable policies have also been leveraged to enroll more poor students,

expand employment for graduates, and help students shake off poverty through

vocational education.

More than 8 million middle and high school graduates from poor families have

received vocational training, 5.14 million poor students have received higher

education, and key institutions of higher learning have admitted some 700,000

students from designated rural and poor areas.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-10/Education-in-China-s-fight-against-poverty-Leaving-no-one-behind-10XpqIElk1q/index.html

Source: CGTN