Some 55 percent of students who are taking China's national college entrance examination this year come from rural areas, exceeding the number of urban examinees for the first time.

The examination, held from June 7 to 9, is the most important examination for Chinese college candidates, as their score is the only factor determining if a student is qualified to enter college.

This year, 7.23 million students are sitting for the examination, among whom 3.98 million are rural students.

The overtaking of rural students is considered reasonable, said Wang Chunguang, a research fellow who has long kept track of Chinese rural issues, as China's rural population accounts for between 60 to 70 percent of the country's total population.

"The change implies that the educational development between urban and rural China is becoming more balanced," said Wang. "The gap is becoming narrower."

Better economic conditions in China's countryside since it adopted the reform policy in the '80s has allowed farmers to invest more in their children's education, said Wang. China's family planning policy leads to fewer babies, who in turn get more attention and resources of the family.

In the meantime, China pushed the nine-year compulsory education countrywide. By the end of 2003, 91.8 percent of the Chinese students have been covered by the compulsory education program.

Statistics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) showed, during the past 20 years, the average education period for rural youth aged between 14 and 17 in the countryside increased by 26.2 percent, beating 23.8 percent of the urban youngsters.

Zhang Chewei, another research fellow with CASS, said the migrant farmer inflow to the city labor market since the 1980s indirectly fuels the growth of rural education development.

"Educational returns" is an idea migrant farmers get from city work besides money, said Zhang. After finding college graduates could land a nice job with a decent salary and much social respect, many of them started to reconsider their long-held choice for their children.

"Among the 3.98 million rural students, a considerable proportion are children of migrant farmers who started to seek jobs in cities early," said Wang. "As farmers get richer, they bear higher expectations for the children's education."

But experts are worried about how many of the rural examinees could be finally admitted to college, as the rural education quality still lags far behind the city.

Wang is also concerned about whether rural students could afford the tuition and fees once they get into the college. The current mechanism for helping poor rural college students needs to be improved, including areas like zero-interest education loans.

(Xinhua News Agency June 8, 2004)