Dear Principal Chan,
To boost China’s development, our school has initiated a fund-raising event which successfully raised a huge sum of money. It arouses much controversy over whether to use the donation to further space exploration or provide basic healthcare and education. I am writing to air my views concerning where the proceeds should be donated to.
Between the two options, I prefer to donate money to the basic healthcare and education in rural villages because of the urgency of the problem with regard to the poor hygiene conditions, contaminated water supply, lack of medical support and extremely high illiteracy rate. These crises are much more urgent than the space exploration.
Aids are very prevalent in poor village. Since the mainlanders don’t have safe sex precautions, they are under the infection of Aids easily. According to the research conducted by the Chinese Health Department, the cases of Aids have surged to twenty million by now, which is a triple of that in 2006. The number of villagers died of Aids has exceeded one million in 2010. This appalling situation of poor villagers is a salient and sound testimony of the seriousness of the healthcare problem.
The healthcare problem is further worsened by insufficient medical support and services. The equipment used is outdated and limited, which cannot cope with current demand of medical services. Furthermore, the poor villages are quite remote and inaccessible, which deters the transfer of technology to poor villages.
In addition, the illiteracy rate is extremely high among poor villagers. I once visited a poor village in Guangxi. Only a minority of kids can afford to study in primary schools while most of them are bound by housework to stay at home. They yearn to learn but are given no chances to do so. After completing the initial stage of schooling, they cannot further their study in secondary schools, let alone graduating from universities. Among the adults particularly the females, a majority of whom cannot read nor write. It isn’t hard to comprehend why the poverty problem is aggravated when the helpless villagers cannot be self-sufficient under such scant resources.
However, the Chinese government has spent ten thousands and five hundred billion RMB on education as well as three thousand and seven hundred billion RMB on rural healthcare. The annual expenditure on space exploration is around 1 trillion dollars that is much more than the resources spent on education and rural healthcare.
Many argue that enhancing the spacing technology level can improve the satellite devices which will bring about lots of benefits such as raising the efficiency of the high-tech equipment. Another plus is to uphold the international status of our motherland, facilitating cross-border trade and generating surplus for the nation. Yet trillion dollars that are spent on space exploration can be better utilized in healthcare and education. The poor health and low literacy rate of villagers is a perpetual burden to the whole country because they will give rise to an unproductive and underprivileged labor force. We must not forget the fact that the rural villagers actually account for more than 60 percent of total population. So this is not a matter relating a specific group of people, but a very important national issue that will cause a severe blow to China.
In conclusion, it is high time we gave a helping hand to the disadvantageous villagers by donating money to improve the healthcare and rural education. I sincerely wish you can give a second thought to the donation decision.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Wong