While the whole world is impressed by China's rocketing economic growth, not many people outside the country have learned of the miracle that is also taking place inside the classrooms. The miracle is multi-faceted: teachers have got rid of the prefix "poor" that people used to add before their title and have turned into a group of envied professionals.

Most children in remote and poorer areas of China now have the opportunity to accept China's nine-year compulsory education; the concept of "character education" has shaped a more confident, capable and versatile new generation.

All this has taken place over the past decade.

To explain how the change has been brought about, there perhaps is no abler candidate than Li Lanqing, who orchestrated China's education reforms during his two tenures as vice-premier from 1993 to 2003.

And this is exactly what Li did immediately after he retired from the office last March.

During 16 interviews with the People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency and the newspaper Chinese Education, Li retraced the course of China's education reforms, analyzed what it has achieved and where it will go, and gave an insight into the previously unknown background of how China's policies took shape.

The interviews were sorted and published by the People's Education Publishing House in March this year, with more than 750,000 copies now sold.

Any interested non-Chinese readers can also get a comprehensive overview of China's educational landscape through the English version of the book, published by China's Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Pearson Education, the world's leading educational publisher. The English edition of the book is considered a milestone in publicizing China's reforms.

"We could not imagine a more suitable time for the publication of such a book," said T C Goh, president of Pearson's Asian company, at a ceremony celebrating the book's publication at the Frankfurt Book Fair last month. "It is exactly the right time for the world to know what has happened in China's education."

The name of the book, "Education for 1.3 Billion," gives a hint of the task China committed itself to over the past 10 years.

"Exactly how large is our education system?" said Li Lanqing in the book.

"Statistics indicate that in 1990, there were 263.54 million people in different types of schools at all levels, and by 2002 the figure had increased to 318.73 million. That was more than the entire population of the United States - a hard fact for China."

So how does China operate a system that caters for such an enormous population?

"You can find all the answers in this book," said Hao Ping, vice-president of Peking University.

The questions Li deals with in the book include issues such as how China has successfully made teaching an enviable profession, how China endeavours to provide a nine-year compulsory education to every school-age child, how China's colleges and universities have been able to increase enrollments by so many in the last few years, how universities and research institutions ensure that their research results enter the market quickly, and many others.

Born in 1932 in Zhenjiang of East China's Jiangshu Province into a traditional intellectual family, Li received typical training in classic arts. His passion for literature and arts continued through his life and was developed to embrace Western arts.

"After retirement I decide that it was finally time for me to spend time on my personal interests," said Li. That also includes his calligraphy and seal carving. The cover of the book bears the imprint of a seal carved by him, which reads "rejuvenating China through science and education." Li also wrote a book on Western classical music, which was published last year.

Aged 15, he studied for one year at a medical college before an illness forced him to drop out. He later graduated, aged 20, from the well-known Fudan University, where he majored in business management and trained in manufacture, business, and administration all at once.

"My curiosity for science is as deep as my interest in literature and the arts, but the more I work the more I find my knowledge limited and feel the need to learn," said Li, who has worked in many fields throughout his life.

The book is interspersed with many quotes from Chinese poems, historical anecdotes, and illustrations of more than 200 scientists and musicians.

(China Daily 11/26/2004 page13)