Since ancient times, people of Zhejiang have handed down farming and education as their fine family tradition, emphasizing education as a means to prosper. Zhejiang Province has traditionally been a place of gathering talents. Since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of CPC, especially during recent years, Zhejiang Provincial Committee of CPC and Zhejiang Provincial Government have placed education in a strategic position for priority development. In 1992, Zhejiang set up the strategy of “Turning the Province Prosperous Through Science and Education” and in 1999, it started to carry out the activity of building prominent counties of education. In 2002, the 11th Membership Meeting of Zhejiang Provincial Committee of CPC raised its strategic goal of building Zhejiang a “Prominent Province of Education”. Through many years of efforts, Zhejiang has established a complete education system including basic education, vocational education, higher education and adult education. Educational reform and development as a result has made remarkable new achievements. The basic education foundation has been solidly laid. In 1989, Zhejiang popularized its primary compulsory education and in 1997, it became the third province in China to “have basically popularized the nine-year compulsory education and basically eradicate youth illiteracy”. In recent years, the province has further clarified the administration system of “Counties take main responsibilities in basic education” in an effort to better popularize the nine-year compulsory education. The province continues to build prominent counties in education, by speeding up a new round of adjustment of primary and secondary school layouts; setting up the “2-Basic” annual examination system; standardizing the schooling system in the stage of compulsory education; strengthening the construction of the demonstration senior high schools; and expanding the scale of senior high education, thus raising the general level of basic education. In 2004, in the whole province, there are 1,278,500 students in kindergarten, 3,443,100 in primary schools, 1,800,700 in junior high schools, and 1,536,000 in senior high schools. The entrance rate of primary schools and the ratio of primary pupils enrolled in junior high schools reached 99.99% and 99.92% respectively. The enrolling rate for three-year pre-school education reached 85.56%,; the enrolling rate for the handicapped children was 97.35%; the ratio for children of floating population was 97%; and the enrollment rate for junior graduates to senior high schools reached 87.76%. The main indexes show that Zhejiang’s basic education is taking a leading position in the country. There are currently 53 prominent counties in education and a large number of “showpiece schools” of high education quality in the province of Zhejiang. Zhejiang’s higher education is full of vigor and vitality. In 1999, the Provincial Committee of Communist Party of China(CPC) and the Provincial Government made an important decision to push forward higher education by fully supporting the construction and development of Zhejiang University so that it can be the “dragon head” of Zhejiang higher education. Speeding up the construction of the provincial level institutions of higher learning is also a priority of the government. The six higher education zones (to be established in Xiasha, Binjiang, Xiaoheshan of Hangzhou, Zijingang campus of Zhejiang University, Ningbo and Wenzhou) will cover an area of 2,633 hectares with a floor space of 11,385,000 square meters, which can hold 36 institutions of higher learning with a student population of 335,000. The overall investment to accomplish our objectives is 21,900,000,000 RMB. Higher education in Zhejiang has been greatly developed by deepening the reforms of the management system, schooling system and logistics socialization. At present, there are 73 higher education institutions with 572,800 students, 463,000 more students than in 1997, and 22,100 graduate students, 3.12 times that of the year 1997. These higher education institutions have 22 academicians from China Academy of Science and China Academy of Engineering, and offer 193 doctorate programs and 481 master programs. There are key subjects, key laboratories and training bases for key majors and personnel at the national and provincial levels. The amount of scientific and research funds for the institutions of higher learning in 2004 reached 2,000,000,000 RMB. The vocational higher education in Zhejiang developed rapidly according to new mechanism, new modes and higher standards with 43 institutions and 170,720 students, which is one third of the entire student population in regular higher education. In 2004, 76.6% of the high school graduates who sat for the National University Entrance Examination were admitted to higher education, which is 44.8% more than that of the year 1997. The gross enrollment rate for higher education was raised from 7.9% in 1997 to 30% in 2004, thus the popularization stage of higher education has been achieved. Higher education in Zhejiang has broken the “bottleneck” and achieved leap-forward development. Vocational education and adult education in Zhejiang have been well developed. The schooling efficiency and education quality have been greatly improved through furthering the reform of administration system and accelerating the adjustment of layouts of the intermediate vocational schools. Intermediate vocational education and regular high education developed coordinately with the enrollment ratio between the two remaining 1:1. In order to strengthen the connection and communication between intermediate vocational education and higher vocational education, “3+2” program and “5-year Consistency” programs have been carried out in vocational education. In 2004, the regular vocational higher institutions enrolled 870,000 students making the student population of 170,800; distance education institutions enrolled 6300 students making the student population of 16,700. The total number of people attending different types of self-study examinations reached 1,450,000 with 750,000 for regular vocational higher education. There are now 250,000 graduates since the self-study examination system was started in 1984. There are 34 vocational higher institutions with non-degree, and 11,900 students were enrolled in 2004 with the total student population of 25,700. In 2004, 20,100 students were enrolled in the adult intermediate schools(with degree), making the student body of 53,200. 4,807,400 workers and farmers were trained in different kinds of technical schools with the eradication of 740,000 illiterate persons. Teacher training in Zhejiang has been enhanced. In 1996 Zhejiang became the first province in China to establish settlement of citizen-managed teachers. Both the eligibility rate of the teachers’ qualification and the ratio of high-level schooling were increased by a big margin through the implementation of teacher qualification system, life-long education system and professional training system. Emphasis is placed on the training of noted teachers and academic mainstays by carrying out the programs entitled “high-level talent cultivation” and “noted teacher, headmaster cultivation” for higher, secondary and primary schools. The province plans to cultivate 200 young and middle-aged academic leaders in higher education institutions, 500 provincially renowned teachers and 200 provincially renowned headmasters both in primary and secondary schools. A special engagement system for specially appointed professors has also been established. The provincial government set up a “Prize for Meritorious Teachers” to honour those excellent teachers who make outstanding contributions in education work. At present, the numbers of teachers in kindergarten, primary school, regular high school, vocational high school, regular higher institution has reached 58,700 160,100 162,900 22,400 35,800 respectively. The schooling qualification rates of the above mentioned school teachers are 94.3%, 98.7%, 97.7%, 92.6%, 76.7% respectively. More than 59.8% of the primary school teachers have associate (or above) degrees, while more than 50.9% of the junior high school teachers have bachelor(or above) degrees. Zhejiang increases its inputs into education in many ways. Great efforts have been made to improve the conditions for school operations. In 2004 the total investment on education amounts to 48,300,000,000 RMB, which is 2.53% of the GDP of the province. To encourage social sectors to participate in the running of schools, there are more than ten thousand non-government-run educational institutions in the province. Measures taken include establishing a basic educational cost-share system, charging the students according to the education cost, and running the bank education credit business. The conditions of the school operations are obviously improved in all schools at all levels thanks to input increase. At present the school construction space for basic education reaches 53,300,420 square meters in the province, while the space for intermediate vocational schools reaches 8,700,610 square meters and that of regular institutions of higher learning reaches 19,726,100 square meters. The libraries of primary and secondary schools own 125,041,700 volumes of books, while the intermediate vocational schools and the higher institutions own 13,235,200 and 41,506,300 volumes of books respectively. The teaching facilities and equipments value of primary schools, secondary schools, intermediate vocational schools and regular higher institutions are 1,464 billion, 2,753billion, 1,151billion and 4,737billion RMB respectively. At the end of 2004, there were 450,000 computers in the primary and secondary schools with 3200 schools having the school internet, and more than 90% of the cities, counties(districts) having local area network. Zhejiang has set the following goals for educational development: By 2005, it will have popularized 15-year education from 3-year preschool education to senior high school education; basically completed the construction of the six higher education zones and accomplish gross enrollment rate for higher education 33%. By 2020, the gross enrollment rate for higher education is projected to reach 40%, and Zhejiang will have built a prominent province in education and basically realized educational modernization.