Since the country has repeatedly stressed renewing education is a key to its revival, the sizzling growth of expenditures in the sector over the past five years is not a surprise.

Last Saturday, People's Daily offered a retrospective look at the country's total expenditure on education, which soared to 548 billion yuan (US$66 billion) last year, up 16.7 per cent annually between 1997 and 2002.

That growth rate is surely impressive. The aggregate spending on education has been doubled within half a decade, far outshining the national economy which amazed the world by maintaining an average annual increase of 7.7 per cent in the same period.

Yet, is it fast enough?

The expenditure hike did raise the ratio of educational spending in line with the gross domestic product, a key gauge of the country's support for the educational undertaking.

However, in comparison with the expansion of the government's fiscal revenues, the source of a better part of the country's total educational spending, the increase in education funds no longer appears as impressive.

Because the quality and efficiency of economic growth has improved constantly, total fiscal revenues rose from 865.1 billion yuan (US$104.2 billion) in 1997 to 1.89 trillion yuan (US$227.8 billion) in 2002.

Such swelling fiscal coffers have enabled the government to invest heavily in many key projects to keep the country's growth momentum even with the impact of the 1997 Southeast Asia financial crisis.

But the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) early this year awakened the country to the reality that non-economic issues are also essential to its development. Education is clearly among those prime concerns to which the government must attach the greatest importance.

The authorities have decided to continue the pro-active fiscal policy next year. That means the government will be financially well equipped to address those problems like salaries in arrears to primary and secondary school teachers and reconstruction of school buildings in poor condition.

Setting additional funds aside through a structural adjustment of budgetary planning for education is imperative.

And a shift must take place from giving funds to higher educational institutes in cities to providing the money instead to primary education in the vast rural areas, which is crucial toward narrowing the development gap between urban and rural areas.

(China Daily December 3, 2003)