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CHINA is drafting a set of laws for a nine-year compulsory education system to help eliminate illiteracy by the year 2000, according to senior education officials.

  Vice-Minister of Education, Liu Bin, said yesterday the new legislation would provide a legal guarantee of public facilities in the compulsory education system.

           ''We are aiming at providing a nine-year education opportunity to 85 per cent of our children. We hope that all will get at least six years of education,'' Mr Liu said at a press conference.

   China had already laid down a strong foundation for education development and it was possible the ''grand goal'' of eliminating illiteracy by 2000 would be realised, he said.

  ''The major difficulty is a shortage of fund. This will have to be mainly shouldered by the Government,'' Mr Liu said.

  A delay in paying teachers' salaries in many areas in China before the Lunar New Year aroused deep concern in the communist leadership and highlighted the crisis in the country's education system.

  A total of 66.2 billion yuan (about HK$58.78 billion) was earmarked for education in the 1994 government budget, representing an increase of 18.5 per cent over the previous year.

  Education Minister Zhu Kaixun said: ''As the Minister of Education, the figure is still insufficient. But the Government has already made great efforts.

  ''The scale of our education [system] is the largest in the world with about one million schools and an enrolment of over 200 million students,'' he said.

  ''We have to have various channels of funding in order to keep the system going,'' he said.

  In addition to government funding, he said the country would rely on various other sources to finance education development.

  According to the minister, three per cent of the revenue generated from business tax, consumption tax and the new value-added tax would be used for education.

  Money would come from businesses run by school and education units and funds would also be raised by the public as well as foundations.

  Mr Zhu said the Government would consider using legal means to ensure teachers were paid in the future.

  A system where local governments would be responsible for paying teachers would be set up, Mr Zhu said.

  Mr Liu said local governments would be asked to include teachers' salaries as part of the expenditure in their budgets.

  He said authorities which had not yet paid teachers would not be allowed to build new houses, hotels or buy vehicles.

  But he said the system of building houses for teachers, introduced in Beijing and the northeast city of Dalian, should be promoted nationwide.

  Meanwhile, two Hong Kong deputies to the National People's Congress said the teachers' pay delay in more than 10 provinces illustrated the lack of respect for the profession in China.

  One of them, Ng Hong-mun, also spoke against the spread of ''aristocratic schools'' and English-speaking colleges and schools in China, saying that was a ''blind worship'' of Western culture.

    ''The language of instruction is important,'' he said.



Six-year target to eliminate illiteracy