Speaking at a news conference for the NPC session, Minister of Finance Jin Renqing said twice that the central treasury was more than happy to pay educational bills.

An educational bill introduced by the Central Government in 2005 exempts rural students from paying tuition fees for their nine-year compulsory education. Under new plans, students from poor rural families at primary or junior secondary schools will now be eligible to receive free textbooks and a subsistence allowance from the government. And the free nine-year education program introduced two years ago will be expanded to cover all of the 150 million rural students in primary and junior secondary schools.

Wang Xinqiong, an NPC deputy and government official from a township in the southwest of China, said that the well-intentioned government attempt to widen education had brought her mixed feelings of happiness and concern. Since exemption of tuition fees in Sichuan, Wang's region has experienced a sharp rise in enrollment of students at primary schools and junior secondary schools, which has led to overcrowding and a shortage of teachers. She said nearly 7,000 primary school and junior secondary school students could not return to campus at the beginning of the new semester in 2006 because of a shortage of classrooms.

The Chinese Government is taking measures to address the problem of strained school facilities and a shortage of qualified teachers in rural schools. Between 2006 and 2010, the central treasury has planned an investment of 10 billion yuan to upgrade facilities for rural junior secondary schools. To guarantee the supply of enough qualified teachers, this year's work report introduced a policy of offering free education to all students majoring in teaching at the six normal universities under the administration of the Ministry of Education, which are also the best normal universities in China. This could lead to the recovery of a tradition of free education for future teachers that was started in the 1940s and lasted for about five decades. President of Inner Mongolia University Xu Rigan said this policy would help the teaching profession to attract talented teachers from poor families, improving China's education quality as a whole.

For students from disadvantaged families, besides basic education the government is offering increased financial support to help them finish vocational and higher education. Central Government is paying a fattening bill to establish state scholarships and stipends in senior high schools and vocational academies, expected to jump from 1.8 billion yuan in 2006 to 9.5 billion yuan in 2007 and 20 billion in 2008.

Social security breakthroughs

The total population of China will be covered by government-subsidized medical insurance by 2010, a goal that was unimaginable four years ago. Before pilot programs of a rural cooperative medical care system were initiated in 2003, China's 900 million farmers, about 70 percent of the total population, had mostly not been covered by medical insurance of any type and were unable to afford one-off payments for medication or medical treatment.

In the latest work report, Premier Wen Jiabao said that the government aims to enlarge the rural cooperative medical care system's coverage to more than 80 percent of counties throughout China during the year. In order to guarantee farmers' quick and convenient access to medical resources, the Central Government has vowed to support the cause of maintaining at least one public hospital for each township and at least one public clinic for each village. The central treasury will provide subsidies to rural central and western regions of 20 yuan per person every year while offering subsidies to eastern regions according to necessity. In 2007, the total Central Government subsidy for medical care will be increased to 10.1 billion yuan from 4.3 billion yuan in 2006. The Central Government at the beginning of 2006 decided that basic coverage for rural residents would be realized by 2008.