China and UNESCO: Advance Hand in Hand

In October 1971, four days after China was formally readmitted to the UN, UNESCO decided to restore China’s legitimate seat, thus becoming the first UN specialized agency to do so.

UNESCO was established in November 1946. China was one of its founding members and also one of the 14 countries to sign an agreement on the establishment of such an organization. In 1972, China attended the 17th General Conference of UNESCO in Paris. However, until the first half of 1978, China’s cooperation with UNESCO was zero.

In July 1978, Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, then director general of UNESCO, visited China. His meeting with Deng Xiaoping completely changed the situation. Upon completion of his visit, M’Bow signed the Memorandum on Meetings between the UNESCO Director General and the Minister of Education, Vice Minister of Culture, and Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Academy of Sciences of the People’s Republic of China. This marked the starting point of cooperation between China and UNESCO. From the second half of 1978 to the end of the 1980s, the two sides annually cooperated on 300 programs.

In February 1979, Deng Xiaoping approved the establishment of the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO. Under its coordination, cooperation between China and UNESCO moved into the fast lane. Today, China’s role in UNESCO has transformed from learner to active participant. 

Cooperation in Education

As the world’s most populous developing country, China has benefited greatly from its cooperation with UNESCO in the field of education. Initially, China was in need of financial assistance. In the 1980s, two UNESCO programs provided grants to more than 1,000 Chinese experts and scholars to participate in more than 120 education schemes, among which 95 were professional conferences and inspection trips to foreign countries.

UNESCO offers a great deal to its member states in terms of intellectual support and cooperation platforms. Since 1978, China has dispatched delegations led by the Vice Minister of Education or high-ranking cadres to the 37th to 45th International Conferences on Education. Chinese delegates have participated in dialogues on science and technology education, middle school education, education for all, development of education and culture, and teacher training.

In May 2015, UNESCO’s International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) was convened in Qingdao, China. Focusing on ICT and education post-2015, participants at the conference sought to create an interface between education and ICT sectors to promote wider and deeper application of ICT in education, thus better promoting the implementation of the world’s post-2015 agenda in education.

China is also a beneficiary of UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) movement. On September 7, 1984, Bazhong County of Sichuan Province received UNESCO’s Noma Literacy Prize for its outstanding performance in eliminating illiteracy. Another four regions and organizations in China have since been awarded International Literacy Awards.

The Education for All movement launched by UNESCO in 1990 aims to popularize primary education, eradicate adult illiteracy and promote continuing education for adults. At that time, China was the most populous country with the highest absolute number of illiterates in the world, its adult illiteracy rate hitting 15.88 percent. China has been an active player in the Education for All movement from the very beginning. It signed the declaration at the Education for All Summit of the Nine High-Population Countries held in New Delhi in December 1993, and issued China’s Education for All Action Agenda in 1993. Today, the enrollment rate of children to primary and middle school in China is close to 100 percent. A report released by UNESCO in January 2014 showed that China performs excellently in increasing literacy; there has been an overall decline of 130 million adult illiterates in China over the past 20 years, reflecting a 70 percent decrease.

UNESCO’s international literacy prizes include the Confucius Prize for Literacy funded by China and the King Sejong Literacy Prize funded by South Korea. The Confucius Prize for Literacy was established in 2005 and recognizes activities serving rural adults and out-of-school children.

In October 1993, at UNESCO’s 27th General Conference, the 184 member states reached consensus to approve the Chinese government’s proposal to establish the International Research and Training Center for Rural Education in China. As the only research institution of UNESCO operating in a developing country, it has laid foundations for the transformation of China’s role in the global education sphere from “taking” to “giving.” Nicholas Burnett, then assistant director-general for Education at UNESCO, said that China was starting to provide more assistance to international society, and that he believed it was vitally important to encourage international society to share China’s experiences.