China
In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education. By 2007, there were 396,567 primary schools, 94,116 secondary schools, and 2,236 higher education institutions in China.
Education in China
The new Communist government created wide access to some form of education for all, except children of people under suspicion of land ownership and political unreliability. The possibility however of re-education and service to the "masses" was held out to bourgeois families as long as they committed to communism as well. This meant that even before the Cultural Revolution, there was a continuum, in China, between the prison, the re-education camp, and the school. Officially, the opportunity was extended to all classes to join China's project on its Leninist terms.