China has made headway in promoting educational equality by making the nine-year compulsory education available and free to all children in rural and urban areas nationwide, says a government white paper.

According to the paper, "China's Human Resources", issued by the Information Office of the State Council Friday, the Chinese government began to adjust and improve the funding mechanism for compulsory education in rural areas since 2006.

Since 2008, the government has been exempting students receiving compulsory education in urban areas from tuition and other fees, it says.

China has been active in promoting balanced development of compulsory education among different regions, prioritizing rural areas, outlying impoverished areas and regions inhabited by ethnic-minority groups in receiving public educational resources, it says.

The government has launched a series of programs to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and between different regions, and to guarantee disadvantaged groups' access to education.

These programs include implementing compulsory education in poor areas, building boarding schools in west China's rural areas, providing distance education for students in rural primary and middle schools, renovating junior high schools in rural areas in western and central China, and supporting special education in western and central China, it says.

The Chinese government has adopted programs that offer scholarship, subsidy and student loans in institutions of higher learning and vocational schools, while increasing financial aid to ensure that students from families with financial difficulties can continue their studies, it says.

According to the paper, 90 percent of the students from secondary vocational schools and 20 percent of university students had received government financial aid, on a total of 43.06 million occasions, by the end of 2009.

Since 2009, students from poor rural families studying at secondary vocational schools and students studying agriculture-related majors in such schools have been exempted from tuition, it says.