From Big News Network, via China National News:
Premier Wen Jiabao announced that China will make “education a strategic priority,” and begin to provide free textbooks and various fee exemptions for poor students in rural areas. This new type of government aid will affect 592 counties this year, and will be expanded to provide for all students in rural China by 2007.
Here is a story from China Daily, about Lin Xue, a poor student from Dalian in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, who could not pursue her academics because of financial problems–a story common to many rural Chinese students.
