Government creates new generation of educated Chinese

Zhang Xiaoping's mother dropped out of school after sixth grade. Her father, one of 10 children, never attended. But Zhang (20) is part of a new generation of Chinese taking advantage of a national effort to produce college graduates in numbers the world has never seen before, reports The Economic Times.

China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using the GI Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of millions of young people as they move from farms to cities.

While potentially enhancing China's future as a global industrial power, an increasingly educated population poses daunting challenges for the country's leaders. Much depends on whether China's authoritarian political system can create an educational system that encourages the world-class creativity and innovation that modern economies require, and can help generate sufficient quality jobs.
Full report on The Economic Times (India) site