Since the founding of New China in 1949, the Chinese government has committed itself in the elimination of illiteracy. In the past 45 years, there was a total of 185 million people who became literate through the government programs. The statistics in the past four years shows in particular that an average of five million people every year, of whom over 65% were women became literate. The illiterate rate of people aged 15 and up in our country dropped from 80% in the early stage after the birth of New China to 12% in 1995. In the same period, the female illiterate rate decreased from 95% to 23% . By 1996, illiterates among young and middle-aged people had reduced to 32 million, which accounted for 7% of the total population of that group.

For years, ACWF has listed the female literacy campaign as an important task, WFs at all levels have taken measures to run evening schools, winter schools and various training classes for women illiterates in addition to their efforts made to help girl drop-outs or girls of school age go to school to prevent new female illiterates at an early stage. The Spring Bud Project (i.e. to help girls finish school education through raising funds from the society , and to protect children's right to education ) which has been implemented by ACWF since 1994 has assisted 100,000 girls to go back to schools, In 1989, ACWF organized the rural women in the campaign of "Two Learns and Two Competes" (i.e. to acquire literacy and technical know-how , to emulate each other in accomplishment and contributions ) which has integrated the goals of making women become literate, technically competent and better-off. Beijing literate and equipped with new agro-technology , many women are enjoying a better life now .In 1994 , ACWF and the State Education Commission had made a special decision to eliminate female illiteracy as an important activity to greet the World Conference on Women in 1995 . A target of 5 million women to acquire literacy was set to be fulfilled before the Conference.

After the World Conference on Women , responding to the call of the Platform for Action , the Chinese government worked out the program for the Development of Chinese Women in which a new target of eliminating female illiteracy was set .To meet the government requirements, ACWF has further formulated its plan of eliminating female illiteracy. The plan aims at helping 3 million women annually and making more than 90% of the women aged between 15-30 become literate by the end of the century. The plan is being implemented now. There are many literacy competitions carried out among the grassroot women at township level in China as requested by ACWF this year. Ten outstanding women in learning Chinese were awarded. Text year, we will organize the fourth "Awards for the Outstanding Women in Eliminating Illiteracy". This is a biannual activity which has been carried out for three times, awarding several hundreds of departments and individuals for their excellent deeds.

ACWF has been actively engaged in project cooperations with international donors for eliminating female illiteracy. Those projects have achieved good results. Because of its outstanding work, ACWF was awarded King Sejong Literacy Prize by UNESCO in 1995.