From: jzhang@sdcc3.UCSD.EDU
Subject: China's Education Expenditure
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 12:16:16 PDT

In his speech at UCSD on April 6, Professor Fang Lizhi presented
some statistics about China's education budget as a percentage of
GNP. He concluded that China's education budget/GNP ratio has been
consistently lower than 3%, "far less than" that in India and other
developing countries at similar stage of economic development. 
To explain why the education budget/GNP level in China is low, Fang
conjectured that it is because CCP "wants to control people's mind". 

Since Professor Fang neglected to present comparative data about
India and other developing countries, I went to the library and find
some interesting statistics from the _World Development Report 1990_ 
(Annual Report from The World Bank) [1], _UNESCO Statistical Yearbook
1991_ [2], and _Statistical Yearbook of China_ [3].


Table 1: General Comparison of Economic Development, Health Care and
Education of Some Developing Countries
                              B'Desh      China     India     Pakistan

GNP per capita ($, 1988)       170        330       340       350
Life Expct at Birth (yrs,1988) 51         70        58        55
Adult Illiteracy (%, 1985)
      Female                   78         45        71        81
      Total                    67         31        57        70


Table 2: Central Government Expenditure on Education as a Percentage
of GNP [1] [2]
                            B'Desh      China     India   Pakistan  USSR
         1972                  ...       ...        2.3       1.2   ...
         1975                  1.1       1.7        2.7       2.2   7.6
         1980                  1.5       2.5        2.8       2.0   7.3
         1988                  2.1       2.3        2.9       2.6   7.8


Table 3: Central Government Expenditure on Education as a Percentage
of Total Government Expenditure [2]
         1975                 13.6       6.3        8.6       5.2   12.9
         1980                  8.2       9.3       10.0       5.0   11.2
         1987                  9.9      11.1        8.5       ...    ...
         1988                 10.5      12.3        ...       ...    ...


Table 4: China's Total Central Government Expenditure as a
Percentage of GNP [3]
                     Total Expenditure    GNP      Expenditure/GNP  
                     (billion Yuan)   (billion Yuan)
         1978         111.1         	358.8        31%            
         1980         121.3  		447.0        27% 
         1987         244.9 	       1130.1        22%  
         1988         270.7 	       1398.4        19% 


Conclusion

As Professor Fang Lizhi pointed out, it is true that the Chinese
government expenditure on education/GNP has been consistently
lower than 3%. Whether it is "far less" than India and other
developing countries is a matter of personal opinion. However,
if we look at the percentage of education in the central government
budget, we see that China's current education expenditure is
comparable to (if not more than) that of other developing countries,
and even that of USSR.  

Table 4 gives a vivid picture of the shrinking role of China's central
government in the economic activities of the nation, as a result of
the decade of economic reforms. Despite being known as the world's
largest socialist/communist country, the percentage of total government
expenditure/GNP in China is even lower than that in the U.S., 
not to say the former USSR. From this table. we can see that
despite the percentage increase in the government budget on
education, the ratio of education expenditure/GNP has stagnated, or
even decreased after the economic liberalizations. We may tentatively 
conclude that people are getting rich as a result of economic reforms.
However, the society has not found new mechanism to channel its
newly-found resources to invest in education.   

Zhenqin Li
jzhang@sdcc3.ucsd.edu