In the People's Republic of China, a greater social attention to the education of children with special needs began to occur in the late 1970s, when President Deng Xiaoping introduced the Reform and Open Door policy. Since then, special education in China has experienced significant reform and fast development, as well as profound political, economic, and social changes. However, education for children with severe developmental disabilities, especially autism, has long been the greatest challenge in special education. Since the occurrence of autism is not subject to such factors as race, ethnicity, or social backgrounds, the prevalence of autism used by Western countries is also applicable in China. If we use the current conservative prevalence of autism (i.e., 15 per 10,000 births) to calculate, it can be estimated that China, with a population of 1.3 billion, has approximately 1.95 million individuals with autism at various levels of functioning. Considering that 75 to 80 percent of the Chinese population resides in remote, rural areas and might experience financial and technical constraints related to identification of autism (e.g., lack of expertise and unavailability of systematic framework for identification and diagnosis), it is reasonable to estimate that approximately 75 to 80 percent of the 1.95 million individuals with autism have not yet been identified or diagnosed properly.
