Editorials

End decade-old deficit

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-22 07:40

The Ministry of Education recently made it a new-year task to help raise the country's fiscal expenditure on education to 4 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Admittedly, this is not a grand goal: The Chinese government actually planned to accomplish the task a decade ago. According to a guideline on China's educational reform and development issued in 1993, the proportion of fiscal spending on education to GDP should have reached that level by the end of 2000.

But for various reasons, a conspicuous deficit in public spending on education has occurred through the past decade as the Chinese economy kept stunning the world with its faster-than-expected growth.

In 2008, the country's spending on education reached 3.48 percent of GDP, the highest level at the time. The official figure for 2009 was not yet available, but the new-year goal the Ministry of Education had set for itself indicates that the government remains behind its schedule of spending no less than 4 percent of the GDP on education.

Though the Ministry of Education alone has not been able to reduce and rid this decade-old deficit in public spending, it is still encouraging that education officials have put this task at the top of their agenda.

End decade-old deficit

We strongly urge the central government to make this goal a binding task for 2010, a year that marks both the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) and the beginning of a new decade.

And the coming session of the National People's Congress in March also provides a good chance for lawmakers to push the government for greater education spending.

We believe that spending of no less than 4 percent of the GDP on education is not only affordable but also necessary for the country to succeed in the future. Ballooning fiscal revenues have given the government the resources to pay a larger amount for education for the people.

In spite of the global recession, China's recovery has delivered more cash than was expected to government coffers last year. The country's 2009 fiscal revenue was estimated at 6.85 trillion yuan ($1 trillion), up 11.7 percent year on year.

Changes in China's growth model require more public spending on education for two reasons.

One, a better-educated workforce is essential to the country's ongoing industrial expansion. Secondly, a smaller public burden of education costs can considerably speed up the country's pursuit of a consumer-led growth.

It is high time to bring an end to the government's long-term deficit in education spending.

(China Daily 02/22/2010 page6)