Dereliction of Duty.(lack of funding for China's schools)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

After a massive explosion blew apart a primary school in Jiangxi province last Tuesday, killing 38 children and four teachers, parents reported seeing the tiny hands of the corpses still clutching fuses. The kids, they say, had been forced to assemble fireworks illegally to make enough money to fund their school. "We have been protesting to the local authorities for the past two years, but the complaints were ignored at higher levels," says villager Ding Mingxing, who lost his 9- year-old son in the blast. Beijing had a different explanation. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji insisted the destruction had been caused by a deranged local nicknamed "Psycho," who had walked into a classroom with two sacks full of explosives and detonated them.

Parents have hotly disputed that theory. "The government is covering up," says one father who lost his 11-year-old son. The tragedy has destroyed any illusions citizens might have had about the state of schools in China's countryside, where three quarters of the population lives. Although the national government promises every child free education for nine years, the burden of funding primary schools is left to local governments. "So if the local government is poor, then there's no money for education," says Sophia Woodman, Asia director for Human Rights in China. That has led to fly-by-night operations like the one in Fanglin village--where a private entrepreneur reportedly contracted with school authorities to have kids assemble firecrackers, with profits going toward school expenses and local officials.

Despite high-flown rhetoric about the value of education, Beijing devotes only 2.4 percent of China's GDP to its public schools--less than India and one of the lowest levels in the world, according to the World Bank. By comparison, Taiwan spends nearly 7 percent of its GDP on education. "It's very common for rural teachers to take money out of their own pockets to pay for individual students' fees or classroom supplies," says Woodman. They don't have much to give: teachers in Fanglin are paid $12 a month, when they're paid at all. In other parts of the country faculty have been known to organize students as day laborers, helping farmers harvest crops in return for a little grain or vegetables. In Shandong province, one local teacher said last week, some of his colleagues were encouraged to sell their semen in order to raise money, "but we felt that was undignified." (Chinese sperm banks favor donors who are considered "intellectuals.")

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