An overview of the historical development of China's model for promoting compulsory education in rural areas indicates that it has two basic characteristics. The first is assuring a stable foundation for material support and expanding the provision of education by adopting measures to reduce operating costs. The second is raising the level of…

This study explores the influence of the 1994 tax reform on intraprovincial inequality in financing basic education. The empirical analysis finds that the reform has decreased inequality in general, suggesting that the center may attain its policy goal through centralizing its relative fiscal capability and increasing the intergovernmental…

In today's steadily progressing economic transformation, and against the background of setting up a harmonious society and striving for a balanced educational development, a reform of the financing system for China's early childhood education is inevitable. However, this reform must be conducted within the framework of social and educational…

Education equity is an important means for achieving social equity, but there are few empirical studies on education equity in Chinese academia owing to method limitations. This paper applies a new measurement method to the 2005/6 data of the elementary schools in Zhejiang province and argues that education finance reform in the province has…

This study analyzes the structural reform of local governments funding for early childhood education (ECE) as the general public still casts doubts about the fairness of ECE system in China. A particular case in point is the Shenzhen Municipal Government's reform on their ECE funding system. Because the reform efforts are more about restructuring…

Chaoyang township is one of the poorest townships in a national-level impoverished county in the southwest. Statistics show that the average per capita income for farming families was RMB1,931 per year in 2006. Before the highway came through the area, the residents of Chaoyang township had to walk for two whole days across mountain ranges to get…

On December 24, 2005, the State Council issued the Circular on Deepening the Rural Compulsory Education Assured Funding Mechanism Reform, initiating the prologue to free compulsory education in China. Following on the heels of China's annulment of rural taxes and the implementation of the new rural cooperative medical system, the rural compulsory…

In 2006, the Chinese government conducted, in the western provinces and a few central provinces, a reform that exempted all rural compulsory education stage students from tuition and miscellaneous fees, in accordance with the measures for implementing the New Mechanism for Assured Funding for Rural Compulsory Education (hereafter "New…

The policy of "two exemptions and one subsidy" (TEOS), which is a "popular sentiment" project, has brought life to the western region's rural education and light to impoverished families. In addition to launching the battle for the "two basics" in the western region, the overall popularization of distance education…

After the implementation of the "two exemptions and one subsidy" (TEOS) policy and between the spring of 2006 and 2007, China's western, central, and eastern regions introduced a new mechanism for guaranteeing rural compulsory education. This mechanism resulted in great changes in the environment for implementing TEOS and, in addition,…

Compulsory education in China's rural areas has come a long way since China adopted the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world toward the end of 1978. By 2004, compulsory education had become available and illiteracy had been eliminated among 93.6 percent of the nation's total population; the enrollment rate of school-age children…

Since 2001, the Chinese central government has begun to take on more financial responsibility for basic education beginning with a modest RMB100 million to provide free textbooks to poor students in western rural areas. This practice has been gradually expanded with the central government providing free textbooks to a widening pool of poor rural…

Beginning in 2006, the "two exemptions and one subsidy" (TEOS) policy was integrated into the New Mechanism for Assured Funding for Rural Compulsory Education (hereafter the "New Mechanism"). The New Mechanism includes TEOS, raising the standard of public expenditure guarantees for rural compulsory education stage schools,…