China has over 300 million children under the age of 16, making up about one fifth of the total number of children in the world. What is the situation of Chinese children today?

　　Every morning at 8 o'clock, 4-year-old Ma Weihang is sent by his mother to the kin-dergarten by car. Ma Weihang and his classmates who are at the same age will do the morning exercises together and then eat the breakfast cooked according to the list presented by the scientist of nutrition. The breakfast is different from each another in everyday, which won't make the children bored. The kindergarteners are all graduated from the kindergartener normal school with different ages from 25 to 40, who have rich professional knowledge on taking care of infants.

　　Ma Weihang's daily life is nearly the same with the children at his age in Beijing, the only difference is the location of their kindergartens, the games and the payment.

　　Nowaday going to the kindergarten is not as difficult as before at least in Beijing. According to the official data, in 1990, the rate of children from 3 to 6 in kindergarten has reached about 70% in China. According to the sample research, 94.8% of Chinese junior school students in Grade 1 have received the infant school education.

　　With great influence of Confucius who is a great thinker considering education as the essence of both a private person and a state, Chinese people are always trying their best to let their children receive the best education. However, China is a developing country with a population of over 1.2 billion, among which over 300 million are children under the age of 16, making up about one fifth of the total number of children in the world. Therefore, it is really difficult to make every child to have a safe, health and educated childhood.

　　In recent years, due to the vigorous support and active participation of governments at all levels and society at large, China's preschool education has been developing steadily. In all, 42.2 per cent of children aged 3-5 years old go to kindergartens. In urban areas, the full-time kindergarten is the dominant form of preschool education, with the boarding system and preschool classes as a supplement; in rural areasswheresthe local economy is better-developed, central kindergartens can be found in every township and preschool classes in every village. In underdeveloped countryside, mountain and pastoral areas, which are remote and sparsely populated, while endeavoring to create conditions for running preschool classes, people are opening children's activities stations, games groups, mobile groups giving children guidance, and other nonregular forms of preschool education.

　　In recent years, China has established an educational fund-raising system, whereby financial allocations are the predominant source, with funds collected through other channels as a supplement. It is stipulated that the increase of allocations for education by the central and local governments should be higher than the increase of regular revenue, thus ensuring a year-by-year increase of average educational appropriations for every student.

　　According to statistics, in 1994 China spent 59.4 billion yuan(US.99 billion) on primary school education, with operating expenses for public use averaging 89.47 yuan(US.5) per student; 43.5 billion yuan(US.11billion) was spent on ordinary middle schools, with operating expenses for public use averaging 239.89 yuan(US.2) per student.

　　Chinese Government pays great attention to educational development in remote and poor areas, as well as areas inhabited by national minorities. Since the 1980s, the state has appropriated school aid for the popularization of primary school education, and subsidies for developing vocational education, normal education and education for national minorities. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance have decided that in 1995-2000, the special funds allocated by the central government for the popularization of compulsory education, plus the supporting money provided by the local governments, should be used to implement the National Compulsory Education Project in Poor Areas. It is estimated that over 10 billion yuan(US.2billion) will be putsintosthe project. The money will be used mainly to improve conditions in primary schools and junior middle schools in poor areas.

　　Popularization of compulsory nine-year schooling is the key goal of China's elementary education program. Thanks to the government's effort and powerful support from society, in 1995 the number of children attending primary school reached 131.95 million, with an enrollment rate of 98.5 per cent for children of school age. In addition, only 1.49 per cent of the students discontinued their studies and 90.8 per cent of the primary school graduates entered a higher school. According to China's present standard on popularization of compulsory primary schooling, elementary education has been basically popularized in areas covering 91 per cent of the country's population. UNESCO statistics show that the enrollment ratio of school-age children in China is much higher than in other countries of the same economic development level.

　　Education for girls is a key problem which troubles developing countries in the field of children's education. When the People's Republic of China was firstly founded in 1949, the country's enrollment rate of girls was only 15 per cent. The Chinese Government later took many measures so that great progress was made in education for girls and the gap between enrollment rates of boys and girls was reduced year by year. China therefore has solved a problem which remains unsolved in many other developing countries. According to statistics, in 1995 the enrollment ratio of school-age girls in primary schools was 98.2 per cent, only 0.7 percentage point lower than that of boys; girl students accounted for 47.3 per cent of total primary school enrollment.

　　In China's poor areas there are children unable to go on to school because of poverty. Governments at all levels have incorporated help for children from poor families to enter school in their help-the-poor programs and, at the same time, have taken various measures to help them return to school. Meanwhile, thanks to the concern of and vigorous promotion by the government, people from all walks of life have been helping these children, enabling them to enjoy the fundamental right to education.

　　In October 1989, the China Youth Development Foundation initiated the Hope Project in Beijing. It provides grants-in-aid as long-term financial assistance to children in poor areas who dropped out of school because of straitened family circumstances, thus enabling them to return to school. In some poor rural areas, it also helps build or repair schoolhouses and buy teaching aids, stationery and books. It has sponsored the "One Million People's Love Movement" and the "1 (family) + 1 (dropout) Help Movement," mobilizing the entire society to help dropouts return to school. By the end of 1995, the Hope Project had raised 690 million yuan(US million), given financial assistance to 1.25 million children for continuing primary education and subsidized construction of over 2,000 Hope Project primary schools.

　　In the next 10 years, China will implement a new program for child development, which focuses on improving the overall quality of Chinese children.