| Our Party and state has been attaching great importance to the development of educational undertakings and has injected large resources, but due to the limitation of the stage of China's economic development and some faultinesses in the running of traditional educational finance system, there still exist some problems that need urgent solution in China's educational finance. First, the total amount of financial expenditure for education is insufficient and the burden individual of education is a little heavy. Second, educational finance resource badly needs the optimization of distribution and improvement of efficiency so that improving efficiency of educational resources and reducing the cost of running school have become the common concern of the whole society. Third, governments at all levels fail to clarify their responsibility and authority in educational input and educational management.We place emphasis on the issue of educational finance, not only because of the faultinesses in the running of China's educational finance, but also because of the vital role which education play in the social and economic development. First, educational finance has an effect on education fair and social justice. Compared with other means of policy distributing income, financial expenditure for education is probably a more effective means of adjusting income distribution. Besides, educational expenditure has the function of investment, which directly affects the capital accumulation of children's manpower. Second, educational finance is an important safeguard for establishing innovative nation and the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has clearly pointed out in the report that China is going to improve capability of independent innovation and build an innovative nation. The construction of innovative nation depends on the construction of innovative personnel as well as sufficient fund input for innovation. Third, through the research on educational finance, we can define the relationship between business power and financial power of different levels of governments.The research done by Academic circles on the issue of educational finance began with the definition of"educational finance". Although they are divided in opinions on the definition of educational finance, researchers agree on two points on the whole: first, the subject of educational finance is the government and the fund needed is public fund; second, the object of educational finance is educational undertakings, only giving priority to either elementary education or higher education through concrete analysis. Specifically, academic circles define"educational finance"from the following angle: One is the theory of educational finance activity; another is the theory of educational finance and economy. A nation's educational finance and economic growth are closely related and interacted. On the whole, the research which academic circles aboard has done into the relationship between educational finance and economic growth went through two stages, which are called qualitative analysis stage and quantitative analysis stage. The outside effect of investment on education has a notable push to economic growth. The issues as to the structure of educational finance expenditure and education fair are also the most concern of the industry. Some scholars think that in the long run the government should constantly increase educational finance expenditure, but it has to be considered that there are still many unreasonable factors in the structure and range of the current educational finance expenditure of China and under the condition of financial strain of China, reasonably adjusting the structure and range of educational finance expenditure may relatively relieve education, especially the condition of fund shortage on common education of the society and increase educational finance expenditure. Some scholars believe that to achieve education fair, especially education fair at the stage of compulsory education, we should further perfect the existing financial system of compulsory education. Other scholars think that not only due supplementary mechanism should be planned but also the central government intervention should be introduced in order to relieve the inequality of educational opportunity and negative effects which the phenomenon of grouping has on the human capital accumulation of low-income families, promote the equality of elementary educational opportunity, and provide the basis of human capital for the sustained growth of labor-intensive manufacturing industries. Academic circles generally believe that the low fiscal revenue of our government is the major factor which affects the input fmr public education, furthermore, the way of raising public education fund in China is relatively single and local governments are likely to compete in the construction of basic facilities for the purpose of attracting working capital in the course of pursuing the economic growth target and directly enter the field of production and construction with the intent of enlarging the resource so that it reduces the scale of the expenditure of public service, which results in the insufficient supply of public service. The scholars, through analysis on the current situation, come up with the presumptions and solutions of China's educational finance system and reform, some of which have been adopted by the government. It is a higher and longer-term objective of financial reform in China's public education to set up an effective, fair and alternative financial system of public education which, based on the stable increasing financial input, supported by the more perfect, reasonable and diversified system of raising fund and by means of carefully selected scope and effective measures of government input, gives the full play to the running of schools by non-governmental sectors, stresses the regulation of economy and law and encourages schools to compete.In this part, we take Britain, America, Japan and South Korea for example and analyze the situations in the running of educational finance of these countries. The educational authority of America is given to state governments and America's public education policies are diversified. In America, as a higher administrative organ, school districts are given greater flexibility and it has its own legal organization--- school district education committee and its executive organization. School districts also have independence of finance and are entitled to collect tax. After 1979, the financial support of American government on elementary education of school districts, which became the biggest resource of elementary education, begun to surpass the property taxes collected by school districts. Modern American financial system of elementary belongs to the relatively intense model. In addition, the income of enterprises run by schools is also a kind of important revenue for American higher institutions. As the neighbor of China, Japan provides China with experiences worth learning in the development of educational finance. Part of the teachers'wages in Japan is provided by the national treasury, whereas the subsidy for the fund of local elementary education becomes the major task of Japanese central educational fund. In Japan, the approach of financial input for both elementary education and national higher education is the special accounting system. Besides, Japanese government uses different supporting policies for private higher education. As a long-established capitalist country, Britain is a decentralized-type country. Both the central government and local government shoulder the responsibility of educational finance. Generally, the central government is responsible for the fund of higher education, while the fund of elementary education, adult education and other types of education is mainly shouldered by the local government and aided by the central government. As another great power, South Korea gets its educational fund from three sources, namely central government, students and legal persons of schmol. Both the government and the beneficiaries shoulder the educational fund. In addition, the South Korean government also provides financial support.Since the founding of New China, and especially since the reform and opening-up started some 30 years ago, under the concern of our party and government, China has made a series of great achievements in the undertakings of educational finance. Firstly, the financial policy"priority to the development of education"has gradually become clear. Treating the development of education and economy equally and the submission of the idea of"developing education just as developing economy"indicate the fundamental change of"economy prior to education"which has been stuck to since the foundation of China. It was raised in the report of the Twelfth National Party Congress that we must take firm hold of the key links including education and regard them as the strategic key for economic development of China. In 1992, the basic principle of educational work put forward by the Ministry of Education in"Ten Years'National Planning for Educational Undertakings and the Ninth Five-Year Plan Period"is to continue to make education a strategic priority, balance well the need to develop education with economic development and make education advanced. In the report of the Seventeenth National Party Congress,"giving priority to education and developing education"and"establishing great power of human resources"put forward at the same time further reinforced the important role and position of education in the social development. Secondly, the structure of fiscal expenditure has been optimized and the unfairness of education has somewhat been improved. The management system of compulsory education in rural areas has been greatly changed and a new management system for compulsory education in rural areas, which places responsibility on the local governments under the leadership of the State Council, was established, with the county playing the principal role, thus changing the practice of urban residents in management of education. The new state-aiding system was set up, which was another important measure to promote education fair after the tuition and fee of compulsory education in rural areas were waived. Moreover part of teachers'training colleges and schools provided free tuition to their students. The input of educational finance has been smoothly increasing and the conditions for running schools have improved. Educational undertakings have developed rapidly and the physique of the Chinese people throughout the country has improved greatly. The government continued to promote and popularize nine-year compulsory education achieved remarkable results and the population after popularizing nine-year compulsory education and eliminating illiteracy among young and middle-aged people in rural areas, reaching a new high without parallel in history. Senior middle school education and education of were constantly expanded and vocational education was rapidly developed. Resources of elementary education were put to a better use. With the support of China's educational finance, China's has made a number of achievement, but due to the effect of various factors, the educational undertakings of China is still confronted with many problems. Firstly, the construction of fiscal system of public education still lagged behind. Secondly, the problems of shortage of educational resources still exist and educational resources are still unable to adapt to the needs for talents of the socialist modernization and needs for high-quality education of the general public. Thirdly, the society is still dissatisfied with the educational undertakings. Fourthly, the distribution and structure of educational resources are not reasonable and education fair was strikingly absent. Fifthly, the system for aiding students, especially the loans for students is still to be improved. Sixthly, there is no environment of fair competition for nongovernmental sectors to run schools. Through the research, we can find that opportunities and challenges go hand in hand in the educational undertakings of China. The"two conferences"held in 2009 enabled us to be optimistic about the future of Chinese educational undertakings. The following are the important educational tasks in 2009: first, to implement free compulsory education in the urban and rural areas throughout the country; second, to strengthen the construction of vocational education, to deepen the reform of management, school running and input of vocational education and training high-quality and skillful personnel; third, to improve the quality of higher education. The financial crisis in 2009 is good opportunity not only for education but also for non-state-run schools. We are fully confident that the total educational finance of China will still be on the rise under the background that Chinese government attaches great importance to education and makes great effort to carry out the policy of"poor country doing well in education". Optimum distribution of educational resources and improvement of efficiency will be thoroughly solved during the constant reform and improvement of educational finance. The responsibility and authority of all levels of government in educational input and management will be more and more definite. With the development of educational undertakings of China, especially the perfection of educational fiscal system, the problems of education fair and society justice are bound to be solved. China will continuously enhance innovation its ability and become a competitive, innovative country.
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