China Watch

Illiteracy is increasing in China, despite a 50-year-old campaign to stamp it out and a declaration by the government in 2000 that it had been nearly eradicated.

Illiteracy is increasing in China, despite a 50-year-old campaign to stamp it out and a declaration by the government in 2000 that it had been nearly eradicated. The reasons are complex, from the cost of a rural education to the growing appeal of migrant work that draws Chinese away from classrooms and toward far-off cities.

In many cases, villagers whose education ended in elementary school have simply forgotten basic skills.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of illiterate Chinese adults jumped by 33 percent, from 87 million to 116 million, the state-run China Daily reported this month. The newspaper noted that even before the increase, China’s illiterate population had accounted for 11.3 percent of the world’s total.

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‘‘The situation is worrying,’’ Gao Xbuegui, director of the Education Ministry’s illiteracy eradication office, told China Daily, blaming the increase on changing attitudes toward knowledge in a market economy. ‘‘Illiteracy is not only a matter of education but also has a great social impact.’’

Gao’s remarks echoed concerns voiced by literacy researchers and served as a reminder of the challenges facing China’s mostly rural population.

This country is proud of its traditional focus on education, as well as more recent efforts to raise standards, such as passage of a law that says every child has the right to nine years of schooling. Yet in many rural areas, such schooling remains unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

In 2000, officials announced that the illiteracy rate in Tibet, the worst in China, had dropped to roughly 42 percent from 95 percent about 50 years earlier. From 2001 to 2005, China educated nearly 10 million adults who couldn’t read and write, the Education Ministry said in September. Authorities have also boasted of higher enrollment figures in primary and middle schools.

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Experts, however, contend that official reports are sometimes unreliable. Local officials are pressured to inflate enrollment figures, and students who are enrolled often don’t bother to show up.

Literacy in China is defined according to an exam taken in fourth grade. Even if villagers pass that exam, they frequently do not pursue further education. Having no reason to read and write, many forget the skills. This is especially true of ethnic minorities and rural women.

‘‘It’s undeniable that there’s a relapse, but what the number is, is hard to tell,’’ said Guo Hongxia, a scholar at the China National Institute for Educational Research.