China has 310 million people being educated at the same time. One out of every four people is receiving one kind of education or another. China is also a developing country with a deficiency of natural resources and a weak economic foundation. Providing education under fairly backward economic conditions is a basic reality in China.
       In 1980, the State Council had the following requirements on conditions of schools providing elementary education: "No school shall have dangerous buildings, every class shall have a classroom, and every student shall have a desk." Today, not only do kids in cities have well-equipped computer rooms but in remote rural areas the best buildings are almost invariably owned by schools. China's elementary education has changed dramatically for the better. By 2000, the rate of primary school attendance reached 99.1 percent, that of junior middle school attendance 88.6 percent, and that of senior middle school attendance 44.5 percent; eighty-five percent of the country's administrative regions had basically popularized nine-year compulsory education.
       Success in basically popularizing nine-year compulsory education has not only depended on policy support of the government and the input of its special fund, but has also been due to financial support from the entire society. Many citizens donated generously for Project Hope and Project Spring Bud. In 1992, by donating to Project Hope, the then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping helped 25 children in the Baise area, Guangxi, who had discontinued study because of poverty return to school. By 2000, Zhou Biaoliang, one of the 25 children who had grown to the age of 19, had finished primary school, junior middle school and a normal school. Her wish was to return to the Project Hope primary school in Pingguo county which she attended, to be a teacher there. She said: "Economic success or failure depends largely on whether or not there are people with skills, which in turn relies on educational conditions. What my hometown lacks most is precisely good educational conditions." Popular support for compulsory education has not only speeded up the popularization of compulsory education but deepened people's own understanding of education.
       In 1995, the Chinese government put forward the strategy of "developing China with science and education." Development of education has since received top priority. "Promotion of economic development and social progress through science and technology and education" has taken root in people's hearts. The Chinese