GOVERNMENT-SUPPORTED CARE: Children play in the Yulinzi Township Kindergarten in Zhengning County, Gansu Province. Last November, a crash involving this kindergarten's school bus killed 19 children, prompting the local government to turn it into a public kindergarten (NIE JIANJIANG)

A baby boom in China after 2005 means that young parents are now locked in fierce competition for sought-after kindergarten slots.

When a reputed kindergarten opens for new student registration it is now common for parents with children of eligible age, 3 years old, to queue for hours and even days outside the front gate. Armed with food, tents and quilts, parents are willing to sleep rough in order to land a spot for their children. In one extreme case, the parents of more than 100 children camped out all night in front of a kindergarten in May in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong Province, despite torrential rains.

This childcare shortage is a nationwide problem. According to a statistical bulletin on educational institutions published by the Ministry of Education, the gross enrollment rate in preschool education in 2010 was 56.6 percent. That year, the country had 150,400 kindergartens with 29.77 million students, of which public kindergartens numbered less than 50,000.

The Central Government launched a three-year action plan for preschool education in 2010 to boost the overall kindergarten enrollment rate. Between 2011 and 2015, the Central Government has pledged to invest 50 billion yuan ($7.86 billion) to finance the preschool education, mainly in the country's economically backward central and western areas.

The lack of quality childcare facilities is particularly acute in China's large cities. An ever-growing influx of young migrant workers means that childcare facilities in these cities are quickly rendered inadequate. Take Beijing for example, the supply-demand disparity is the most severe in newly developed suburban residential areas like Huilongguan, Wangjing and Tiantongyuan, where young people choose to live due to the relatively cheap housing and rental prices.

The recent baby boom is partly driven by people's belief in having children in the lucky years in Chinese astrology. The huge number of "dog babies," children who were born in the Year of the Dog in 2006, "pig babies," those born in 2007, and "Olympic babies," those born in 2008, have resulted in an enormous pressure on the capacity of kindergartens in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

According to government statistics, a total of 460,000 children were born in Beijing between 2007 and 2009, while the cities' licensed kindergartens' capacity was only 220,000 in 2010.

The kindergarten shortage prompted the Beijing Municipal Government to increase investment in preschool education. As part of the effort, it will invest a total of 5 billion yuan ($786 million) from 2011 to 2013 to build new facilities and expand existing facilities. As a result, the total kindergarten slots in Beijing will increase from the current 278,000 to 353,000 in the next three years. According to government statistics, more than 600 million yuan ($94.28 million) was invested by the government in 2011, resulting in an increase of 33,000 slots. Another 900 million yuan ($142.86 million) will be injected this year.

Hardly affordable

Now in China, urban parents who start looking for a kindergarten for their young ones are often startled to discover that kindergartens with decent facilities, whether public or private, charge even more than universities.

Most public kindergartens divide their fees into two parts: a monthly tuition and a one-off surcharge, commonly known as "sponsorship fee," that parents are "encouraged" to pay to guarantee their child's enrollment. According to a report on People's Daily, one public kindergarten in Beijing asks parents of prospective students to fill in how much they would like to "sponsor" on the application form. It has been rumored by parents of current students that the minimum sponsorship fee of that kindergarten has risen to 100,000 yuan ($15,719).