Inside the Modern Dragon
China: A 21st Century Engine of Change
"Education Systems Compared: The U.S. and Chinese Public Schools”
By Patricia Mohr @
I. Education & Economic Growth
June 2009—Thirty years of market reforms in China have presented opportunities as well as challenges for both the Chinese and for Americans. As China has opened up its economy to the world, the world has opened up to it by sending it jobs and investments. Since 1979, China’s economy has increased by 1,712 percent as its trade expanded and as foreign direct investments increased 173-fold. By 2007, China’s economy was growing at an annual rate of 13 percent while the U.S. economy was growing by 2 percent per year.
Table 1. Economic growth in China and the United States, 1979-2007 1979 2007 China United States FDI Inflow $8.7 billion $237.5 billion Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators |
Some people see China’s rapid economic growth as a threat. They view the global integration of China’s massive and low-cost labor force, in particular, as cause for concern their own job security. These fears are exacerbated by reports that foreign students outperform U.S. students on international tests and that Chinese universities now graduate more engineering students than U.S. universities do.
Several studies and reports give this group reason to worry. According to one study, U.S. schools have not raised student outcomes in the last 30 years. Furthermore, a 2008 documentary, Two Million Minutes, aggravated U.S.-based anxieties by suggesting that Indian and Chinese high school students study harder and outperform U.S. students in science and math. One survey sponsored by the Chinese suggests that Chinese students spend more time studying for classes than U.S. students.
Table 2. Study Habits Spend more than 2 hrs per day Spend less than 2 hrs per day Studying Studying
China 57% 43% United States 25% 75% Source: China Youth & Children Research Center (2008) |
Meanwhile, other researchers argue that fears about U.S. students falling behind their foreign peers are unfounded, and they see opportunities in China’s rapid economic rise. Education reporter Jay Mathews writes, “The widespread feeling that our schools are losing out to the rest of the world, that we are not producing enough scientists and engineers, is a misunderstanding fueled by misleading statistics.”
While the debate over global competition continues, there is a worldwide consensus that universal and high-quality education is an essential ingredient for ensuring that current and future workforces can compete for high-valued jobs in the global economy. Yet developed and developing countries alike have difficulty in making high-quality schooling available to all their citizens. The following comparative review of Chinese and U.S. investments in their schools will help elucidate that point.
II. National Control
The most notable difference between China’s and the United States’ education systems relates to governance. In China, the central government controls all decisions regarding educational standards, curriculum and course material.Moreover, the central government establishes the age for which children can begin school and instructs primary and secondary schools how to teach each subject. China’s Constitution clearly gives this authority to the central government. It says:
“The state runs schools of various types, makes primary education compulsory and universal, develops secondary, vocational and higher education and promotes pre-school education. The state develops educational facilities of various types in order to wipe out illiteracy and provide political, cultural, scientific, technical and professional education for workers, peasants, state functionaries and other working people. It encourages people to become educated through self-study. The state encourages the collective economic organizations, state enterprises and undertakings and other social forces to set up educational institutions of various types in accordance with the law. The state promotes the nationwide use of Putonghua (common speech based on Beijing pronunciation).”
Despite the strong central-government role in planning policies, the state is laissez-faire in some respects. The constitution, for instance, advises citizens to undertake “self-study” activities and encourages public and private institutions to establish educational institutions of various types. Furthermore, provincial, county, township and village governments are responsible for planning and managing education services, financing the construction of school buildings, and paying teachers salaries. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that China’s central government establishes the academic standards which all schools must meet.
By contrast, the U.S. Constitution declares that all powers not delegated to the federal government are “reserved to the States.”Consequently, each U.S. state establishes its own academic standards for subjects and overall curriculum requirements.
This decentralized governance structure is a matter of significant debate within the United States. Some researchers oppose the state-run approach, arguing that countries that outperform U.S. students on international tests have one thing in common: national standards and core curriculum requirements.Other researchers say states should continue to take the lead in setting academic standards. Still others argue in favor of compromise. For example, one proposal emphasizes cooperation between states and the national government: States could continue to maintain control, but they would be required to follow national guidelines when designing academic standards and curriculum requirements.
The U.S. Congress flatly rejected a proposal to nationalize academic standards during consideration of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, but the issue is far from settled. Several presidential candidates for the 2008 election, including Sen. Chris Dodd, introduced proposals to adopt the compromise approach using federal fiscal incentives. In 2008, President Obama signed a stimulus bill into law that sends billions of dollars to states for public education on the condition that governors promise to raise academic standards and improve the quality of tests. Through the power of the purse, the U.S. federal government is increasing its role in state standard-setting.
The federal role in education has been growing since President Carter and Congress created the Education Department in 1979. More recently, federal testing and accountability mandates under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act marked a significant shift away allowing states to make all decisions about education policy.
III. Fiscal Decentralization
Although the two countries differ in way they govern schools, they appear to be remarkably similar in the way they finance them. In both cases, schools have garnered most of their resources from local revenue sources, such as property and agricultural taxes. That means the federal shares of total education spending in China and in the United States are rather limited—11.3 percent and 9 percent, respectively, for 2006.
Chinese leaders are trying to increase the country’s overall spending on education to 4 percent of its GDP. Having once been criticized for devoting less to education than other developing economies—2.1 percent of GPD as compared to the average of 3.9 percent for developing countries, Chinese leaders have been gradually increasing the proportionate spending.
Table 3. Govt. Expenditure as a Percent of GDP
Source: UNESCO, World Bank, South China Morning Post & Paying for Progress in China, edited by Shue & Wong |
In both countries, the federal governments have been increasing expenditures on education. Furthermore, both have increased the share of total spending devoted to education. Coincidentally, the 2008 global economic crisis prompted both countries to passed fiscal stimulus measures, which funnel sums worth billions of U.S. dollars to schools.
Table 4. Central/Federal Govt. Spending (in billions)
*projected | Sources: U.S. figures are from U.S. Dept. of Education, budget history tables. China’s figures are collected from the National People's Congress (Full text of reports on China's central, local budgets submitted to NPC, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Text of reports in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua) |
In the United States, the limited federal role in financing education corresponds with a limited federal role in writing education policy. But in China, there is a dichotomy between control and finance. Though Chinese law gives the central government full control over policymaking, its fiscal system is based on a revenue-sharing method between the central and local governments. According to China’s Ministry of Finance, local governments are responsible for financing economic and social development in their regions while the central government is responsible for expenditures for national defense, foreign affairs, national agencies, macroeconomic economic development and regional restructuring.
-- Read More on the Next Page --
About this Project
This is a web-based journalism project about modern China—a country undergoing massive industrialization and technological change. [Read more...]
