Previous Fora / 2013
ZHANG, Linxiu
Deputy Director, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy
Linxiu Zhang, professor and deputy director at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
For the last 30 years, most of her research concentrates on policy relevant studies on rural development in China, particularly on rural labor market development; rural public goods investment and public services; impacts of rural fiscal and institutional reforms, economics of health and education. She is also the director of a program named Rural Education Action Project (REAP). She has published more than140 papers with more than 70 papers in refereed international journals. She received “Outstanding Young Scientist” Award from NSFC in 2003 and also “100 Talent” award from CAS in 2007. She won “Ten Most Outstanding Women in Science” award from CAS in 2013. Recently, she received the TWAS Celso-Furtado Prize in Social Sciences for 2013.
ABSTRACT
09:00-10:30 25 NOVEMBER
PLENARY SESSION I. “INEQUALITIES AS BARRIERS FOR GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY”
Education Inequality as a challenge to sustainability development in China
China’s economic development is going through a critical process of transition With rapid wage increases as well as demographic re-shaping of the society, it is expected that the wages will continue to increase. Thus, for the economy to sustain it’s continued growth and development, economic restructuring and industrial up-grading are the necessary steps that China has to go through. However, even with improved business environment and sufficient investment into new innovations, challenges do exist for the economy to transform. Among these, to have sufficient and quality labour forces to meet the new demand of high productivity business needs is one of them.
This presentation will start with a brief general introduction of development in China and its’ major challenges, specifically human capital challenge. Then it will be followed by analysis the root cause of this challenge--the inequality gap in education between rural and urban. The last part of the presentation will be introducing efforts made by Rural Education Action Programme (REAP) to search ways of addressing education inequality. The final message of the presentation is: if China starts to act now, there will be enough time to address this challenge.