【数字看中国】教育Education, Millions of Scholars

Before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, basic education was severely lacking in China, with a nationwide literacy rate of only 20 percent. In the past six plus decades, the literacy rate has been raised to 96 percent of the adult population. Today, most Chinese children start school at six or seven. They receive nice years of free compulsory education that includes primary and junior secondary stages, followed by three more years of study at senior secondary level before becoming eligible to take the national college entrance exam. Noticeably, an increasing number of students are deciding to study abroad. Last year, 275,000 Chinese students were studying in the US, accounting for 31 percent of the total number of international students in America. In comparison, India was a distant second with less than 12 percent.