Education Reform in China :: Schooling Teaching Essays

Education Reform in China In order to realize the Four Modernization of Industry, Agriculture, Science and Technology, and National Defense Modernization, China began its economic system reform in 1978. The reform was referred to as marketization, commodification, and socialization. From then on, the market-oriented system has been gradually established to replace the planned economic system, which was adopted for several decades (Information China, 1989: 468), and â€Å"the economy has grown at an astonishing annual rate of nearly 10%† (Lin, 1997: 66). Following the success of the economic system reform, Chinese education system is being changed. Historically, â€Å"the Chinese always put strong emphasis education†(Lin, 1997, 69). For a long period, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, to promote the idea of â€Å"serving the people† and to fulfill the goal of â€Å"the education must serve proletariat politics,† indicated by Mao Zedong, the Chinese government mainly relied on policies and administrative decrees to guide and administer educational activities (Wei, 1995:12). For example, â€Å"the basic task for Chineae higher education to implement the state’s educational guidelines and produce specialized manpower of various kinds in a planned way so as to satisfy the needs of socialist construction† (Information China, 1989: 954). Based on the public ownership, all schools were public schools. The government provided educational funds, including higher education. In addition, the government obligated mandatory-assigned jobs system (Zhou, 1995:15). This education system was suited to the highly centralized planned economic system, but was divorced from economic development. Because of the high speeding of economic development, the Chinese industry impacted on the Chinese education system. Pushed by the economic reform, the Chinese education system started its reform in the mid-1980s. The relaxation of government’s control and the change of the goal in education The reform of the Chinese economy changed the planned-economy perceptions first. The concepts of social planning from planned economic system which was based on the public ownership was replaced by the ideas of the market-oriented economic system. New value ideas were accepted. The â€Å"new value stressed personal interests, material incentives, differential rewards, economic efficiency, marked distribution, and competition†(Mok,1997: 262). So the government changed its function from controlling public activities to providing comprehensive service.