Why Jihan Can't Read; China has vowed to beat illiteracy and claimed victory, but experts say the truth is more troubling.

Byline: Sarah Schafer

China has pledged time and again to wipe out illiteracy, which makes the story of Zhou Jihan quite awkward. Not because she has yet to master her Chinese characters, but because there are still many millions of Chinese struggling like her to learn to read and write as adults. That's a shame Beijing would prefer you did not read about.

Zhou, now 36, grew up in a poor family in a remote village in western China. Because even the local primary school charged high fees, Zhou's parents made what the whole family considered an easy choice: Zhou's brothers went to school, and she and her sisters stayed home to work on the farm. "I never went to school once in my childhood," said Zhou. "We followed the tradition of paying more attention to the boys of the family than to the girls." She's proud to have memorized more than 1, 000 Chinese characters, but must learn 500 more to be considered literate. But Chinese authorities had promised more than painstaking progress.

In 2000, the Chinese government announced that it would wipe out illiteracy among adults as well as ensure free nine-year compulsory education for children by 2005. In 2002, state media reported great strides: the illiterate share of the population had fallen from 22.3 percent in 1992 to just 8.7 percent. That was the last time Beijing released official figures on illiteracy. But in April, the state-run English-language China Daily announced that illiteracy had returned to "haunt" the country. The article quoted a top education official, Gao Xue-qui, saying at a conference that the number of illiterate Chinese had grown by more than 30 million from 2000 to 2005, creating a "worrying" situation.

That report cast doubt on China's claim that its citizens are among the most well educated in the world. Two days later, China Daily, apparently under pressure, ran a correction saying Gao's figures were unofficial, as well as a story claiming that illiteracy is, in fact, in decline. Most experts don't buy it, saying Beijing never put the necessary funding behind its literacy drive. Wu Qing, founder of the Cultural Development Center for Rural Women, which offers classes to illiterate women, calls education reform a "total failure." Huang Yasheng, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, says local governments shifted so much money from education to infrastructure ...