ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the public funding of basic education (primary and junior secondary) since the 1970s, and on the evolving relationship between financial and administrative arrangements. It discusses different ways of conceptualising centralisation and decentralisation, and how these relate to an analysis of policy on educational funding and governance. The chapter outlines the formal structure of the system for administering schooling, before analysing how this has related to the pursuit of state goals for the extension of compulsory schooling. It shows how radical decentralisation of responsibility for school funding in the 1980s and 1990s has given way, since the Hu–Wen administration, to a significant degree of recentralisation. As the state's contribution to school funding increased, urban areas witnessed a renewed drive to clarify the distinction between 'private' and 'public' educational provision. The chapter also explains the centrality of politics, and examines how, beneath the ebb and flow of Beijing's reach and responsibilities, key political imperatives persist.
