China Aims to Eliminate Illiteracy in Young People

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, February 21, 2002

China Aims to Eliminate Illiteracy in Young People

China plans to eliminate illiteracy among 15 to 24 year olds during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005).

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China plans to eliminate illiteracy among 15 to 24 year olds during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005).

There are currently 85 million illiterate people in China, of whom 20 million are young or middle-aged.

Over the past 10 years, more than 48 million illiterate Chineseadults have learned to read and write. The proportion of illiterate adults in the population had declined to 8.7 percent by2000 and illiteracy among the young and middle-aged had dropped from 10 percent to 4.8 percent, said Vice Minister of Education Wang Zhan.

However it is a complicated task to eliminate illiteracy altogether as the majority remaining are female, elderly or peopleliving in remote areas, Wang said.

Wang called for dedicated efforts to prevent and to reduce the number of existing illiterate people.

An efficient method of eliminating illiteracy in rural areas isto combine the anti-illiteracy campaign with production by teaching farmers practical production skills, he said.

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