China will beef up human resources development this year through
implementing the strategy of relying on talented personnel to
strengthen the country, the country's top legislature was told
Saturday.
Ma Kai, minister in charge of the State Development and Reform
Commission, made the remarks in his report to the legislature on
the implementation of the 2003 Plan for National Economic and
Social Development and on the 2004 Draft Plan for National Economic
and Social Development.
"The top priority for our work in education will continue to be
rural education. We will lose no time in improving the mechanism
for ensuring adequate funding for rural education to make it more
regular and institutionalized."
He acknowledged that China will intensify its efforts to make
nine-year compulsory education basically universal and to basically
eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged people in the
western region, he said.
"We will continue the project to renovate dangerous primary and
secondary school buildings in rural areas and the national program
to make compulsory education universally available in
poverty-stricken areas."
Ma went on to say that China will work harder to develop
high-quality universities and key disciplines and improve the
quality of higher education, increase the number of key senior
secondary schools and vigorously develop vocational education and
continuing education.
Plans call for enrolling of 4 million undergraduate students and
330,000 graduate students in regular institutions of higher
learning in 2004, the minister said.
(Xinhua News Agency March 6, 2004)
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