Early child development in rural China: status and suggestion

Early childhood development (ECD) has a significant impact on personal academic achievement, social integration and health in adulthood throughout one′s life. Promoting ECD has been proven to be one of the most cost-effective poverty alleviation strategies and a solid foundation for achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. There are about 28 million children aged 0 − 4 years in rural China, which is a huge population. However, there are still gaps in health care, nutrition and early learning opportunities between the children in rural and urban areas. China is now at a critical point in the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, and promoting ECD in rural areas is of great importance to radically interrupting the inter-generational transmission of poverty. In this paper, we described current situation of ECD, nurturing care as well as supporting environment in rural areas of China, and put forward several suggestions to promote ECD in those aspects.