Every year some 15 million Chinese officials are trained by teaching personnel numbering around 108,000 – a volume unmatched anywhere else in the world. There are over 4,500 official education and training institutions in China above the county level, including 3,100 party schools, 300 schools of administration, 400 cadre schools and 600 professional training centers. This book gives readers a rare insight into how China educates and trains its officials to run the most populous country and second biggest economy in the world.

Throughout the 93-year history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China’s cadre education and training can be divided into three stages, each lasting for about three decades:

The first stage (1921-1949) was from the establishment of the CPC to the founding of the PRC. Cadre education at that time was mainly focused on the teaching and dissemination of Marxist philosophy among party members and cadres.

The second stage (1949-1978) was from the founding of the PRC to before the start of reform and opening up when the CPC transformed from a revolutionary party into a governing party. A network of party schools emerged at central and regional levels making a solid basis for socialist nation building.

The third stage (1978-2014) was from the start of the reform and opening-up policy to the present. This new era of China’s official education is characterized by a more scientific approach with the aim of fostering a Marxist governing party that is learning-oriented, service-oriented and innovation oriented.

China’s spectacular achievements in agriculture in recent decades – whereby it has succeeded in feeding some 20% of the world’s population with 9% of its arable land - have been somewhat overshadowed by the equally astonishing progress in urbanization with the latter grabbing more attention domestically and internationally.

China’s much-vaunted ‘reform and opening up’ started in the countryside in the late 1970s with the change from planned, centralised, collectivised agriculture in commune and brigade enterprises to the creation of town and village enterprises (TVEs) based on the household contract responsibility system which allowed Chinese farmers for the first time since the founding of the PRC to use land to grow their own crops and develop their own agribusinesses once they had fulfilled their quotas for the collective.

This was nothing short of a revolution in agriculture which transformed China’s agricultural economy from one characterized by perennial shortages to surpluses by 1998 – the turning point after 20 years of reforms. Since then, the reform and development of China’s agriculture has gone from strength to strength.

As the authors of this book document in great detail:

The per capita net income of Chinese farmers has trebled over the past decade from Rmb2,622 in 2003 to Rmb7,917 in 2012 - an annual increase of over Rmb540 (US$80);

The growth in per capita net income of farmers has been higher than the growth of per capita disposable income of urban residents over the same period – holding out hope for reducing the urban/rural income gap – one of China’s key long-term goals;

How China’s Yuan Longping - publicly acknowledged by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) back in 1982 as the world’s ‘father of hybrid rice’ - and his team developed a superior strain of hybrid rice enabling China to be self-reliant in rice consumption; Longping remains an active IRRI member to this day.

Every year some 15 million Chinese officials are trained by teaching personnel numbering around 108,000 – a volume unmatched anywhere else in the world. There are over 4,500 official education and training institutions in China above the county level, including 3,100 party schools, 300 schools of administration, 400 cadre schools and 600 professional training centers. This book gives readers a rare insight into how China educates and trains its officials to run the most populous country and second biggest economy in the world.

Throughout the 93-year history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China’s cadre education and training can be divided into three stages, each lasting for about three decades:

The first stage (1921-1949) was from the establishment of the CPC to the founding of the PRC. Cadre education at that time was mainly focused on the teaching and dissemination of Marxist philosophy among party members and cadres.

The second stage (1949-1978) was from the founding of the PRC to before the start of reform and opening up when the CPC transformed from a revolutionary party into a governing party. A network of party schools emerged at central and regional levels making a solid basis for socialist nation building.

The third stage (1978-2014) was from the start of the reform and opening-up policy to the present. This new era of China’s official education is characterized by a more scientific approach with the aim of fostering a Marxist governing party that is learning-oriented, service-oriented and innovation oriented.

China’s spectacular achievements in agriculture in recent decades – whereby it has succeeded in feeding some 20% of the world’s population with 9% of its arable land - have been somewhat overshadowed by the equally astonishing progress in urbanization with the latter grabbing more attention domestically and internationally.

China’s much-vaunted ‘reform and opening up’ started in the countryside in the late 1970s with the change from planned, centralised, collectivised agriculture in commune and brigade enterprises to the creation of town and village enterprises (TVEs) based on the household contract responsibility system which allowed Chinese farmers for the first time since the founding of the PRC to use land to grow their own crops and develop their own agribusinesses once they had fulfilled their quotas for the collective.

This was nothing short of a revolution in agriculture which transformed China’s agricultural economy from one characterized by perennial shortages to surpluses by 1998 – the turning point after 20 years of reforms. Since then, the reform and development of China’s agriculture has gone from strength to strength.

As the authors of this book document in great detail:

The per capita net income of Chinese farmers has trebled over the past decade from Rmb2,622 in 2003 to Rmb7,917 in 2012 - an annual increase of over Rmb540 (US$80);

The growth in per capita net income of farmers has been higher than the growth of per capita disposable income of urban residents over the same period – holding out hope for reducing the urban/rural income gap – one of China’s key long-term goals;

How China’s Yuan Longping - publicly acknowledged by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) back in 1982 as the world’s ‘father of hybrid rice’ - and his team developed a superior strain of hybrid rice enabling China to be self-reliant in rice consumption; Longping remains an active IRRI member to this day.