This research examines education in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Specifically addressed in this research are modern educational change and development in the PRC, (2) the underlying cultural base in the PRC, (3) the educational system in the PRC, and (4) the relationship between societal change and educational change in the PRC.
Since the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, the development or the education system in China has been geared particularly to the advancement or economic modernization.1 Amonq important efforts taken to improve the country's educational system were (1) the 1984 decision to enact several major laws on education, and (2) a 1985 plan to reform the educational system. In the reform plan, the government of the PRC introduced a requirement for nine years of compulsory education. The reform plan also established the State Education Commission. The Seventh Five Year plan (covering the 1986 1990 time period) provided a 72 percent increase in the level of financial resources committed to education in the PRC.2 Viewed in another context, funding for education in 1986 accounted for 16.8 percent of the national budget, compared to just 10.4 percent in 1984. Since the creation of the PRC in 1949, attempts have been made in the PRC to put an end to academic elitism.3 Formal efforts to attain this goal were components of both The Great Leap Forward (which lasted from 1958 to 1960), and the Socialist Education Movement (which lasted from 1962 to 1965). Subsequent to the student led uprising in the summer of 1989, the efforts to end academic elitism have been enhanced. The post Mao PRC leadership has sought to establish education as the foundation for the Four Modernizations.4 The Four Modernizations is the core of a development strategy, the goal of which is to transform China into an advanced industrial economy by 2000. The modernizations are (1) agriculture...