Q: Basic education is vital to every developing country. What is the current situation of basic education in China? How much is invested in it, and can this investment satisfy the need of basic education?

A: China is a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion. This is the fundamental reality of the country, and also our major resource. If the quality of life is very low, the population will be a heavy burden; if the quality is very high, the massive population will be a rich resource and valuable treasure. To turn the burden of a huge population into an abundant resource and treasure depends on education.

Since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and especially since reform and opening up in late 1978, China has leapfrogged in pushing forward development of education, essentially popularizing compulsory education and eliminating youth illiteracy.

In recent years, China has made big efforts to invest in education. It has adopted a policy of requiring governments at every level to increase educational funds by 1 percentage point every year they prepare a budget. The Central Government has taken the lead and local governments have followed suit. With effort, investment in education has grown from 2.45 percent to 3.41 percent of the GDP, an increase of 0.9 percentage points in five years.

China's GDP has been rapidly increasing in recent years and the investment in education is also increasing a lot. There are very few countries with a per-capita GDP of US$1,000 that have popularized a nine-year compulsory education system as we have done. We run the world's largest education system with a relatively small amount of money, and the education is of pretty good quality. Of course, compared with the strategic role of education, as something given priority in national economic development and modernization efforts, such investment is far from enough. But to further increase investments in education is the resolution of the Chinese Government and also the desire of the whole Chinese people. Within the next two to three years, China's investment in education will account for 4 percent of its GDP.

However, we can't deny that the rapid development of education will inevitably accompany many difficulties and problems, among which the most salient one is the contradiction between people's strong desires for good-quality education and an insufficient supply of good-quality educational resources. Inadequate investment in education continues to be a challenging issue. As a result, the problem of casual charges still exists in some schools where compulsory education is carried out.