How a Poverty-stricken County Realized the Goal of Popularizing Nine Years of Compulsory Education

By the end of 1996, nine of the ten districts and counties under the jurisdiction of the government of Jinan municipality in Shandong Province had already passed the provincial government's inspection of the results of popularizing nine years of compulsory education (NYCE), with Shanghe County being the only one remaining. Shanghe County had once been one of the fourteen impoverished counties in Shandong Province, with an annual revenue of less than 40 million rmb. Earlier this year, when people estimated that it would take some 60 to 70 million rmb for the county to be able to realize the popularization of NYCE, even the people of Shanghe themselves thought this was a fairy tale.