8 Nov 91
FE/1224 C1/8
adopted the policy for some of the farmers to "leave the field but remain in the village", and, by vigorously developing rural enterprises and encouraging individual households to run industrial and sideline occupations along specialized lines, found the fundamental way out for the surplus labour force in rural areas. Since 1985, the unemployment rate in urban areas has remained at around 2.5%, which is fairly low as compared with other countries in the world.
The Constitution provides that public property and the legitimate property of citizens are protected. Public property owned by the state, collective property owned by the working people, and the legitimate property owned by individuals are all protected by law. Any organization or individual is thus forbidden to occupy, seize, share out or destroy such properties. It is also forbidden to seal up, withhold, freeze or confiscate such properties by illegal means. The state protects the citizens' ownership and inheritance rights to their legitimate income, savings, housing and other legitimate properties. The rights of use and contract management of state-owned land, forests, mountains, grassland, uncultivated land, beaches and waters obtained by units under public ownership and collective ownership and private citizens through legal means are protected by law. Whoever infringes upon such rights shall be dealt with by legal means.
At present, there are more than 90,000 private enterprises in China. Like the properties of units under public ownership or collectively owned by the labouring people, the legitimate properties of private enterprises are under the protection of law and shall not be illegally seized, sealed up or confiscated. The Chinese government also provides legal protection to foreign investment, joint ventures with Chinese and foreign investment, and solely foreign-owned enterprises in China.
The right of education is an important prerequisite for the overall, free development of human beings. In old China, the majority of the working people did not have such a right. With only less than 20% of school-age children going to school, more than 80% of the total population were illiterate. After the founding of new China, the government took various measures to guarantee the citizens' right of education by devoting great efforts to the development of education. By 1989, China had set up 1,045,000 schools at various levels in urban and rural areas. Among them 1,075 were regular institutions of higher learning. In 1990, about 99.77% of school-age children in the cities and 97.29% of school-age children in the countryside were attending school. The numbers of college, middle school and primary school students were respectively 17.6 times, 40.3 times and 5 times the 1949 figures. During the 1949-90 period, a total of 7,608,000 graduate and undergraduate students completed their college education, almost 40 times the total between 1912 and 1948 in
old China.
Since China adopted the policy of reform and opening to the outside world. the number of students studying abroad has been rapidly increasing. Since 1978, China has sent 150,000 students in various disciplines of learning to study in 86 countries and regions. So far almost 50,000 of them have returned after finish:ng their studies, and over 100,000 of them are staying abroad. After the political incident of 1989, the number of Chinese going abroad to study has not decreased
SWB
but has increased to some extent. In 1990, China completed its plan of sending 3,000 government-sponsored students abroad for academic pursuits. Meanwhile, about 6,000 students were sent to foreign countries by various units, and 20,000 (not including those enrolled in Australian and Japanese language schools) paid their own way to study abroad.
According to statistics of departments concerned in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou [Canton], more than 3,000 students have returned from overseas and have started work at their new posts during the past two years. In the meantime, more than 5,700 students have returned to countries where they study after coming home to visit relatives, take vacation or do short-term jobs. According to international norm, Chinese students who are sponsored by the government to study abroad have the duty to return to serve their home country. The Chinese government, always valuing returned students and creating favourable working conditions for them upon return to China, has set up special organizations to take direct responsibility in receiving and arranging suitable jobs for returned students. More than 70 post-doctoral mobile research centres and short-term working stations have been set up by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and various universities, offering fine research and living conditions for those who have returned. Moreover, the Chinese government and related departments have set up a number of foundations to raise funds for scientific research and to aid returned students in research and teaching activities.
The Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of scientific research and literary and artistic creation. In order to promote the development of scientific research and to bring about cultural and artistic prosperity, the Chinese government upholds the guideline of "serving the people and socialism" and the principle of "letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred of schools of thought contend". Since the founding of new China, the contingent of scientists and technicians has steadily expanded. In 1990, state-run units employed a total of 10,808,000 natural scientists and technical workers, 24.4 times more than the 1952 figure of 425,000. The State Commission of Natural Science Foundation has since its establishment in February 1986 accepted 34,847 applications for scientific research projects which call for a total allotment of 2.31bn
yuan.
Large numbers of outstanding achievements have been registered in the field of science and technology. In biological science, Chinese scientists succeeded in making synthetic bovine insulin and in converting yeast alanine into synthetic ribonucleic acid (RNA); in agricultural science, experiments in hybrid paddy rice have been successful; in high-energy physics, an electron-positron collider was constructed; other achievements in high technology are represented by the successful explosion of atomic and hydrogen bombs, the making of super-computers capable of 100m calculations per second, the leanshi g of thy Long March 3 carrier rocket and the research in satellite telecommunications and superconductivity. In all these fields, China has either reached or approached advanced world levels.
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