The Impact Of "Tax-Fee Reforms' To The Rural Compulsory Education

China has witnessed astonishing achievements through more than twenty years' reform and opening-up. However, the growing problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers in China have gradually prevented the economy from sound development, and further threatened the prestige of the Party leadership. By the turn of the new century, the Party and the Central Government have once again turned the eyes to the rural areas at large and introduced the Rural Tax-Fee Refonns to ultimately reduce the burden on farmers, and therefore set out the steps of building the well-off society in an all-round way.The rural tax-fee refonns is a significant policy that the Central Government and the State Council wish to strengthen the fundamental position of agriculture, protect the basic benefits on farmers and safeguard stability of the rural areas. The objectives of the refonns are to regulate the distribution relationship between the state, the collectives and the farmers, to help promote the farmers' senses of trust and support to the Communist Party and the Central Government, and utmost protect and develop the productive forces of agriculture. This is another adjustment and re-establishment of mutually beneficial relationship between the state, the collectives and the farmers, too.However, the ongoing rural tax-fee reforms, so-called as "a Moral and Political Measure", which is greatly supported by the farmers, have come across a series of accumulative contradictions, difficulties and problems. Among all of them, the concussion to the 9-year compulsory education, which has resulted from therural tax-fee reforms, turns out to be one of the most sensitive and serious problems. The objectives of this paper are to explore the impacts of the ongoing rural tax-fee reforms to the rural compulsory education, analyze the causes and try to find the possible solutions to them.This paper is designed to choose two typical rural towns as the study samples, one is a rural town from the eastern coastal developed regions, Chengxiang Town, Anxi County, Fujian Province; the other is a rural town from the western remote and poverty-stricken counties, Yesanguan Town, Badong County, Hubei Province. On the whole present situation, the system for managing compulsory education in rural areas is being constructed by shifting the main responsibility to county governments, and the compulsory education in rural areas march on still in difficulty. With the practice of the tax-fee reforms, the rural compulsory education in eastern regions are getting fairly better than before, but unfortunately in the middle-western regions there are not any big changes, except that the national standard salaries for teachers can be available in time under the pressure of "Three Guarantees" within the tax-fee reforms.The impacts of the tax-fee reforms to the rural compulsory education exist, mingling hope and fear. On the hopeful side, the reforms ensure the educational input sustained to a certain extent to the rural compulsory education, partially promote the balanced development and free it from the rural features. And the reforms make it possible to enhance the teachers' professional development and favorable to optimize educational resources. But on the anxious side, there are more problems, such as, reimbursements of the leaving-behind debts, handling of the leaving-behind properties, moderation of school emerges, long-term guarantees ofteachers' salaries, unauthorized charges over students, construction and maintenances of school campuses, and consolidation and improvements of the existing outcomes of the compulsory education as well.There are many a problems out of the rural compulsory education, but not all of them are to blame for the tax-fee reforms. Prior to the reforms, there is no argument that some have already existed. Right after the reforms, there is also no argument that more problems have appeared. More attention should be paid to that there would be more hidden dangers since the reforms are produced. Careful analysis of these causes is good for us to find out the bottleneck of the problems and work out the solutions. To make a comprehensive survey of the problems, 1 believe that the tax-fee reforms can't tear apart from them, because the reforms have got some policy-making defects, including lack of legal basis and imperfect of supportive measures. Fairly speaking, it is unfair to attribute all the problems to the ongoing tax-fee reforms, because the reforms are not the only sources to cause so many problems over the rural compulsory education. The policy-making defects at the local governments and the management defects of the rural compulsory education are to blame too.Some of these problems have existed for a long time, and the tax-fee reforms just make them even worse or more protruding, resulting from the contradictions between the present educational input system, the rural economic system and the rural economic conditions. Therefore, as the tax-fee reforms goes further, it is imperative to deepen the reform of the rural educational system, clarify the mainstream channel of input to the rural compulsory education, standardize the financial system for transfer payments and ensure the sound and sustainabledevelopment of the rural compulsory education.More specifically, first, it is urgent at present to draft "the Law of Compulsory Educational Input" to stipulate legally the obligations of the educational input to the rural compulsory education for the governments at different levels. The system for managing compulsory education in rural areas must be improved by shifting the main responsibility to county governments. And in accordance with different financial capabilities of each province or county, it is desirable to divide more than 2000 counties all over the country into three kinds of counties: One is to shift the main responsibility to county governments, one to shift it to provincial governments, and another is to shift it to the central government.Second, in order to expand the financial channels, except that governments at different levels properly share the proportions of educational input, it is necessary to make the rules or regulations concerned that encourage the individuals and enterprises to donate or invest in education. And the Law on the Private Education in China must be further perfected to eliminate the discrimination policies over the private education. As a result, it is possible to eventually break the single structure that only governments run schools. And next, in order to standardize the financial transfer payments for a regular and stable input to the rural compulsory education, the system of financial revenue and expenditure within the tax-fee reforms must be perfected under supervision.Third, the school-running system of the compulsory education must be improved in the process of the tax-fee reforms, the overall geographical arrangements of schools must be adjusted, so that resources of the compulsory education would be possible to be improved, the teachers' professional development...