The illiteracy rate among people over 15 years old in China has dropped to 8.72 percent, according to the Ministry of Education.
The illiteracy rate was more than 80 percent in 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded. In 1990, the rate had dropped to 22.2 percent, Monday's China Daily quoted a document from the Ministry of Education as saying.
Among the people aged between 15 and 50 -- the major targets of efforts to eliminate illiteracy -- the rate has dropped from 10.38percent in the 1990s to 4.8 percent at present.
The figure for female illiterates has been slashed by more than half. In 1990, 128 million adult women were illiterate and now the number is fewer than 55 million.
(Xinhua News Agency November 18, 2002)
