University of Chicago Press Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise

Scott Rozelle is a development economist at Stanford University and Natalie Hell is a writer. The book reports on the research of the authors and their team at Stanford’s Rural Education Action Program. It's well-written and easy to read, considering that its substance derives from technical research.The central theme is that inadequate education constrains China’s rise from a middle- to a fully developed and upper-income country. The book finds that education is especially weak in rural China, where 64 percent of the population lives. The authors predict shortages of qualified labor over the next several decades.Many Americans may ask why they should care, since our leaders treat China as a rival and an unfair competitor. The authors expect that a slow-down in China’s growth would harm both the developing and industrial countries that export to China. For example, it would harm US exports to China (soybeans, wheat, pork). It would harm poor countries where China sub-contracts production (Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia).Slower growth would frustrate China’s youth as they enter the labor market and would sharpen inequality between the less-educated rural and the more-educated urban population. This could provoke internal political conflict. There's a risk that China’s leaders would respond to domestic division by inflaming nationalism, for example through military expansion. We Americans are better-off with fat and happy than with hungry and angry rivals. It was irrational for President Trump to think that the USA could be better off with a poorer China or Mexico.It’s difficult to see how China can continue its growth performance without heavy investment in education. The 2015 micro-census showed that only about 30 percent of China’s labor force had a high school or higher education, putting it behind all the other middle-income countries. The figure for the industrial (OECD) countries was 80 percent. Only 12.5 percent had a college education. The industrial countries are at 35 percent. Happily, China has already started to expand university education, but building a quality university takes time.The hukou (residence permit) system has been a major cause of poor education. Under hukou, the hundreds of millions of workers who migrated from rural villages to cities cannot send their children to free public elementary and junior high schools in the city. If migrants bring their children with them to a city, they must pay fees to informal and poor-quality private schools. The alternative is to for migrant workers to separate the family and leave their spouse and children in the village, where the children can attend school for free.Many poor children can’t attend high school (grades 10 to 12) because their parents can’t afford the fees. This is a problem in rural areas where incomes are low. In 2010, high school attainment in the rural labor force was only 11 percent, compared to 44 percent in urban areas. Further, there was a quality problem. Many rural high schools are vocational schools with less qualified teachers and less academic curriculums than urban schools.The incentives facing bureaucrats work against rural education. Local authorities may not fund quality public education since most of the benefits spill-over to the urban areas. Moreover, the benefits are realized over the long period so that local government bureaucrats are unlikely to win promotion in the near-term.A further cause of poor educational achievement is inadequate early childhood nutrition. This harms cognitive development and children’s learning. (I am unsure whether this finding contradict the official data, which show low rates of wasting and stunting (indicators of early childhood malnutrition). Infection by intestinal worms is another cause of poor achievement. The worms consume food and can leave children feeling fatigued at school. Many school children have difficulty learns simply because they don’t receive vision tests and eyeglasses.Inadequate coverage of secondary and university education may explain the middle-income trap, in which middle-income countries cease to grow rapidly and fail to break through to high income status.These influences on education could cause China could fall into the middle-income trap. The ‘trap’ describes the tendency for growth of per capita GDP in the middle-income countries to slow, or to cease, so that the countries fail to break through to mature into high-income countries. The per-capita GDP of Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa has been roughly flat for much of the past decade. These are countries all failed to offer good-quality secondary education to their youth.In contrast, Taiwan, Korea, Ireland, and Israel were middle income countries which achieved high-income status. All have delivered quality secondary, technical, and university education to a high proportion of their youth. Korea built its growth strategy around delivering educated graduates to priority heavy and tech industries. Ireland pioneered the establishment of (tertiary level) technical institutes.The authors propose the following policies improve education. First, fund education from a central budget to counter the tendency to underfunding by local authorities. Second, offer fee-free, central government funding to secondary education to all students. Third, reform the hukou system to allow children of migrant workers from the countryside to attend public schools in cities. Finally, deliver health education to parents, to teach them principles of nutrition, and how to prevent intestinal worms, and the provision of glasses.

Me ha parecido un título interesante y escrito desde una perspectiva inusual

non è messo bene, è ammaccato è sporco, polverosissimo

For anyone who has come to believe that the economic rise of China to world pre-eminence is inevitable this book is well worth a read. The authors examine the social, cultural and political flaws within the system that could well impact as the country moves away from a low wage economy to middle income status. The process has already started and maybe the Chinese system and society is so unable to respond to the challenges that it will eventually fail to reach its promise. That would affect us all, argue the authors.The evidence is well argued and coherent. It is not, however, exhaustive. There is little mention of how utterly corrupt the system is from top to bottom nor of the many barriers to employment and promotion which exist for Chinese workers unless they have 'connections', especially within the ruling communist party.It's a good read and well worth examination.

Hervorragende Recherche auf dem Land, mit Informaionen, die so nicht zugänglich sind. Absolut lesenswert!