Since 1986 when the National People's Congress ratified the Compulsory Education Law, China's achievement of nine-year compulsory basic education for its huge school-age population has been rapid and successful. However, the rate of achievement has grown unevenly across the country, reflecting the different economic development patterns of the more prosperous Eastern coastal China and poor Western and rural areas. As quantitative targets were gained for most of the country, attention turned to the quality of basic education and the increasing gap between the more advanced and less developed areas. Shortage of resources for improving the situation in the poorest areas led the Chinese government to seek assistance from international donors, including the European Union. This article describes a joint European Union-China project undertaken to improve the quality of compulsory nine-year education with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty in one of the poorest Western provinces, Gansu. It outlines the policy context and summarises the project's organisation, strategies and outcomes. It identifies the main issues that arose during its implementation and examines the inter-cultural dimension of collaborative work on this project.