Officials in China Ordered to Stop Withholding Teachers’ Wages : Education: Local authorities have been diverting salaries, in some cases for a year. The money often goes to get-rich-quick schemes.

In an effort to stop local officials from spending education funds on get-rich-quick schemes and perks such as staff automobiles, the Chinese central government this week ordered local authorities to pay thousands of community school teachers who have had their salaries withheld or delayed during the last year.

In some cases, reported the People’s Daily newspaper in its Wednesday editions, provincial bureaucrats have been told that their own salaries will be withheld until the teachers are paid.

Senior Chinese leaders, including Premier Li Peng, reportedly have intervened on behalf of the unpaid teachers.

The practice of local authorities diverting teachers’ salaries into investment schemes has become a serious problem in recent years under the market-oriented economy instituted by senior leader Deng Xiaoping.

Under Deng’s “socialist market” economy, government officials--including even the lowest-level village chief--have been encouraged to branch out into private business.

Unfortunately, this sometimes has meant using money earmarked for teacher salaries to launch dubious development projects, such as building hotels in bleak, remote areas with no likelihood of tourism, or buying automobiles or other luxuries.

According to the People’s Daily, local governments across China owed teachers $164 million in back wages in September.

“There is this urge to develop economically, and some of the funds were diverted,” said a foreign education specialist based in Beijing.

The official newspaper of the State Education Commission said in an editorial this week that local government officials “must not be allowed to have any new construction projects, or to buy fancy new cars or to build houses or halls” until the teachers are paid.

As in the recent cases of local governments failing to pay farmers for their crops, the teacher-pay issue underlines growing problems faced by the central government in maintaining fiscal order in the increasingly independent provinces.

Last summer, farmers in two districts of Sichuan, China’s most populous province, rioted when money-strapped local authorities gave them IOUs instead of cash for their crops.

A spokesman for the State Education Commission said in newspaper interviews Wednesday that incidents of teachers receiving IOU slips instead of cash had been reported in all the country’s provinces except Beijing and Tibet.

Many demoralized teachers, who at best earn the equivalent of $80 a month, have quit the profession to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

According to a recent article in the Guangming Daily newspaper, 216,000 teachers, at least half of them younger than 35, quit their jobs in 1992. Unofficial sources say the number may be much higher.

Some former teachers are now found driving taxis or tending shops in China’s major cities. Others have been attracted to the higher pay and better facilities offered by China’s burgeoning system of private schools.

According to the State Education Commission, more than 20,000 private schools and kindergartens had been opened in China by the end of 1993.

Many of these schools have impressive facilities, including computers and classroom televisions. However, tuition fees of up to $1,200 per semester for an elite private middle school in Beijing are beyond the reach of most Chinese.

Parents of public-school children in Beijing pay an average of $25 a semester in activity and book fees.

A breakdown in China’s massive public education system would be a blow to one of the major accomplishments of the Communist government since it took power in 1949. At that time, China had only a 20% literacy rate.

By the 1990 census, the literacy rate had reached 73%.

According to the “basic education index” compiled by UNESCO, the United Nations’ education arm, China ranks 21st among the world’s 87 major developing countries in terms of several key educational indexes, including literacy and dropout rate.

In contrast, India, the world’s second-most populous country, ranks 63rd, with a literacy rate of 48%.

“Basic education does remarkably well in China,” commented one envious Indian diplomat.

As early as March of last year, Chinese Vice Premier Zhu Rongji, subsequently elevated to the country’s economic policy chief, called the delayed payments to teachers a national problem, particularly in poor rural regions served mainly by community teachers dependent on local governments and village levies for their wages.

Under the largely decentralized Chinese educational system, about 37% of the nation’s 10 million schoolteachers fall into this minban category.

The pay problem is less severe for the gongban category of teachers reimbursed directly by state education departments or by industries that maintain company schools.

The People’s Congress, China’s national legislative body, addressed the problem in its landmark “Teacher Law of the People’s Republic of China” passed on Oct. 31 that serves as a bill of rights for teachers. The law, which took effect Jan. 1, guarantees that teachers “receive salaries and remunerations on schedule.”

According to the People’s Daily, Chinese Premier Li has alerted provincial leaders that “delaying payment to teachers is not permitted.”

However, even after the new teacher law took effect, officials estimated that the teacher pay shortage, although much lower than the $164 million in September, was still $35 million in arrears.