In the small village Du Zhan is from, students study on stools inches above the dirt floor in a school with no adornments apart from the simple portraits of communist luminaries hanging side by side in the teachers' meeting room. Sixty of the school's 100 students pay tuition and fees of $17 a month; the 40 poorest cannot afford that and attend for free.

In the Beijing public high school Du Zhan dreams of attending, students learn from some of the best teachers China has to offer, in classrooms equipped with state-of-the-art computers and labs, alongside peers destined for the Chinese elite.

Both schools are inaccessible to Du, 15. She is too poor for one, too proud and ambitious for the other.

Like millions of Chinese children whose parents abandoned subsistence farming for better opportunities in the booming cities, Du is lost in the nation's education system.

Over the last several years, more than 150 million migrant workers like Du's parents have moved to the cities for construction, factory and other bottom-rung jobs. Although China has eased the residency rules that once prevented peasants from leaving their farms, it has not figured out how to adequately educate the millions of children on the move with their parents. This leaves the children with the same poor schooling and prospects.

Migrant workers have fueled the booming economy in the world's most populous nation and boosted China into the top tier of global trading powers. But the dilemma facing students such as Du Zhan serves as a symbol of China's gaping inequalities.

Güncelleme Tarihi: 20 Eylül 2018, 18:16