BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Educational investment has played aprincipal role in poverty reduction in China's vast rural areas, according to a research report of the World Bank reaching here Friday.

    Investment in education yields the best result in rural povertyr eduction, followed by input in other sectors such as telecommunications, agricultural technology, construction of roads,electric power and water resources.

    The report, compiled by Fan Shenggen, a senior researcher with the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said the contribution of educational investment to the improvement of agricultural productivity ranked only behind that of technology spreading.

    "Education is a long-term investment with both private and social profitability in human resource development," said Chen Weiguang, deputy director of the financial bureau under the Chinese Ministry of Education.

    Investment in general education can produce higher private profitability, he added.

    The Chinese government has set it as its human resource development strategy to basically popularize the nine-year compulsory education and basically wipe out illiteracy among the young and middle-aged so as to improve the quality of rural population, eradicate poverty and eventually promote the advancement of the whole society.

    By 2002, nine-year compulsory education had been available in 91 percent of the populated areas, compared with 40 percent in the early 1990s, while the illiteracy rate among the young and middle-aged had declined to below 4.8 percent from 10 percent.

    The popularization of compulsory education offers an equal opportunity of receiving education for the rural people and improving their ability to participate in poverty reduction and social development, experts say.

    An investigation by the Ministry of Agriculture shows that in the rural area, the higher a farmer's educational attainment is, the more income he gets, and those who have had vocational training enjoy a higher employment rate.

    The popularization of basic education has also promoted the transfer of the surplus labor force from rural areas to cities. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show there are more than 88 million rural people working in cities, and most of them are young farmers with a middle-school education.

    At present, there are 150 million surplus laborers in China's rural areas and the number grows by six million every year. Enditem