Chinese former Vice Premier Li Lanqing's book on education has been published in English, and has received wide acclaim overseas, sources with the Ministry of Education (MOE) said in Beijing Monday.

Li, the official in charge of China's educational sector from 1993 to 2003, gathered his remarks and papers on education in the book, which covers the achievements, current situation, developing trends and governmental policies regarding education in China.

The Chinese version of the book was published last December, drawing wide-ranging attention from domestic readers, especially within the educational circle. The Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and the Pearson Publishing Group collaborated to edit and translate the book into its English version, which has been promoted in the United States, Australia, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and has attracted foreign publishers to work on Japanese, Thai and German versions.

Zhang Xinsheng, vice minister of Education, said China has opened itself by learning from other countries' educational systems, while the world still knows little about Chinese education. Li's book will help the world see the efforts of a large developing country to provide education to its 1.3 billion people.

MOE statistics show that 190 million Chinese students received nine-year compulsory education in 2002. In the same year, China put 548 billion yuan (about 66.3 billion US dollars) into the educational sector, more than five times the figure for 1993. On-campus college students reached 16 million, marking a new era of popularized higher education for common Chinese.

Source: Xinhua