Ethnicity:

In addition to its majority, the Han people, Sichuan is also inhabited by many ethnic groups including 13 with at least 5,000 people each: the Yi, Tibetan, Qiang, Hui, Mongolian, Lisu, Manchu, Naxi, Bai, Bouyei, Dai, Miao and Tujia.

Sichuan has China’s second-largest Tibetan region as well as the largest region inhabited by the Yi ethnic group and the only region where the Qiang people live in homogeneous communities. The Yi ethnic group, with the largest population of any minority in Sichuan, lives in the Greater and Lesser Liangshan mountains and the Anning River Valley. The Tibetans live in the Garze and Ngawa Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures and the Muli Tibetan Autonomous County in Liangshan Prefecture. The Qiang people, one of China’s oldest ethnic groups, live mainly in Maoxian, Wenchuan, Heishui, Songpan and Beichuan on the upper reaches of the Minjiang River.

Education:

Currently, Sichuan has 43 regular institutes of higher learning with 236,000 registered students in 2000; 209 secondary vocational schools with some 257,000 enrolled students; 4,375 regular middle schools with some 3.37 million enrolled students; and 45,133 primary schools with some 8.27 million enrolled students. Five universities including Sichuan University, Southwest Jiaotong University and the University of Electronic Science and Technology were constructed under the state's 211 Project. Areas with 89.2 percent of the province's population have adopted nine-year compulsory education. The attendance rate of primary school-age children has reached 99.41 percent and that of middle school-age children, 75 percent. The attendance rate of disabled children, including those with incomplete limbs and mental retardation, the blind, deaf and mute, has reached 75 percent.