China's Higher Education Balanced Regional Development And Fiscal Policy

Developing higher education (HE) is to ensure economic and social sustainable development and to facilitate social progress requires a balanced development of HE, which embodies both social ideal and responsibility, In the 17^th National Congress of CPC of 2007, it was reiterated that the scientific outlook on development "takes development as its essence, putting people first as its core, comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development as its basic requirement, and overall consideration as its fundamental approach". This basic thought of scientific outlook on development provides guideline for China's social and economic progress. To ensure a balanced development of HE, the principle of "Five Balances" (balancing urban and rural development, development among regions, economic and social development, development of man and nature, and domestic development and opening up to the outside world) should be bom in mind.Currently China's HE is experiencing an unbalanced development, among which the increasing gaps between regions is the most obvious problem. More than causing unparalleled regional economies, unbalanced development of HE also denied citizens in different regions of their equal access to education. Thus it brought about waste of social resources and impaired social stability and as a result educational equity will not be achieved. To carry out study on China's HE unbalanced regional development is a positive response to the policy of "building-up a better-off society based upon guideline of scientific outlook on development" and meets the need of initiating "Strategy of educational regional development" and "Regional socio-economic planning". Meanwhile, the research is conducive to educational equity and efficiency.The five-chapter thesis analyzes China's higher Education balanced regional development and fiscal policy. The first chapter of introduction reviews research literature of the similar kinds both at home and abroad and presents the basis for issue of HE and its balanced regional development. In the second chapter, what HE balanced development refers is explained, which provides a unified prerequisite for the following discussion. The third section states China's unbalanced development of HE in different regions and its influence. It starts with China's overall HE condition and follows by indicator telling China's unparalleled status. In the fourth chapter, it states China's policy and practice and also explores the role of market and government in dealing with unbalanced development. The last chapter is about fiscal policy to promote China's higher education balanced regional development.This paper adopts methodology of combining theoretical framework and empirical analysis. It is systematic yet focused research and a comparative study by nature. Firstly, its states respective roles of market and government and puts forward that governmental fiscal policy should be of importance in facilitating HE development. Governmental role is comprehensively analyzed and its fiscal function of distributing financing is emphasized. It consists of HE financial policies comparison between developed and developing countries. Following the way of "making options after knowing well the nature: of issue", the paper offered three fiscal policies of investment, tax-collecting and transfer in China's HE balanced development.The originality and creativity of the paper lies in its applying economic theories for policy suggestions upon China's HE balanced development. The advice is at China's current socio-economic condition, a more effective solution to HE unbalanced development is the option of public fiscal policy, especially transfer payment.