High schools in 12 more coastal Chinese cities will recruit
students from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the country's
northwest, a regional official said on Tuesday.
Nur Bekri, Deputy Party Secretary of Xinjiang, said that cities
in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces will run
special programs for students from Xinjiang with the approval of
the Ministry of Education.
This means that a total of 24 cities in economically developed
areas will have Xinjiang Classes, a program originally launched in
2000. With the expansion 5,000 students are expected to be able to
enroll annually from 2007.
The program targets children of farming and herding families
from Xinjiang's many ethnic minorities. The region lags behind the
country's coastal areas in education because of relatively slow
economic development.
Nur Bekri said the promotion of special school programs for
Xinjiang children in economically developed cities is a significant
step to boost the social development of the region.
Meanwhile, Project Hope announced that it has enabled more than
2.6 million dropouts in China's poorer rural areas to return to
school and continue their education since its launch in October
1989.
Tu Meng, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Youth Development
Foundation (CYDF), said a total of 11,000 Project Hope primary
schools have been set up in the countryside since the first one
opened in eastern Anhui Province.
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The project also plans to fund 15,000 students from migrant worker
families in 27 cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Nanjing
to go to school during the second half of this year.
The project has improved education conditions in China's poorest
areas and provided opportunities to millions of school-age
children, according to statistics from CYDF.
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China faces serious challenges in providing universal education to
its population of 1.3 billion and particularly to its rural
population despite steady progress over recent years.
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In some outlying regions, including many areas inhabited by ethnic
minorities, many children of needy families still cannot afford to
go to school and every year about one million pupils drop out to
help support their family.
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Since its inauguration, Project Hope has received more than 2.2
billion yuan (US$265 million) in donations from domestic and
overseas sources including individuals, government organizations
and major transnational corporations.
(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily October 14,
2004)