Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2020. ix, 231 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) US$27.50, cloth. ISBN 978-0-226-73952-6.
China’s level of education is below what should be expected, its human resources are not suitable for the future, and the urban-rural difference is reinforced by rural children having much lower IQ levels than their urban counterparts because they are under-stimulated, do not get healthy diets, and are often not treated for simple diseases such as intestinal worms or bad vision. Invisible China is a mind-provoking book in many facets. It is very easy to disagree with several of the book’s arguments, but writing them off as simply not true, is not possible, as these arguments are well sustained with what appears to be thorough research. While the book does not claim to be right, it merely lays out a somewhat gloomy perspective for the future of China—a future perspective that could, at least partially, be changed for the better if some of the research-based experimental solutions practiced by the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) team directed by lead author Scott Rozelle are spread throughout China.
Many China scholars, including myself, claim that while China may be poor, its population is relatively well educated. This also applies to a substantial part of the poor, rural population. This book claims something else. Co-authors Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell argue that China is in fact not poor. It is on the verge of potentially changing its status from a middle-income country to a high-income country; and for a country at this stage, neglect of China’s rural population means that China’s biggest problem is that its human resources are not sufficient to allow China to climb the ladder to becoming a high-income country. On the contrary, long-term stagnation and degrowth is a more likely scenario. There are several objections one could have against this argument. I find it hard to believe, for example, that the people I have met in rural China—who find the most creative ways to make a living—are really as bad at adjusting to new forms of production as the authors seem to suggest. On the surface, the fact that high school attendance by the current rural generation is at the same level as that of Norway, does not seem to exactly be a crisis. But, the authors argue, the vocational high schools that most rural youngsters attend only provide very specific knowledge in a narrow practical area, and this practical training, their studies show, is often of a very bad quality. Being from a Scandinavian country where we, like in Germany, have a tradition for separating an elitist Gymnasium and a set of more practical-oriented upper secondary vocational schools, this is one of the book’s findings I found least convincing. The authors do argue that in fact, German vocational high schools have up to 70 percent largely academic classes. Bearing this review in mind, I presented the authors’ argument to both a director at a Danish vocational school and a man who had been educated first as a chef and later as an electrician. They both refused that what made their educations suitable to an advanced economy of the twenty-first century were the academic skills that some, but not all, of these educations involved. They found that specific but outdated skills they had learned, such as repairing picture tube TV sets, were in fact quite transferable to newer technologies. Both men thought that vocational secondary educations in many ways were better suited for preparing youth for the twenty-first century than the more academic Gymnasium, where they saw the mandatory curriculum on ancient Greek pillars as particularly useless. While it seems beyond any doubt that some of the vocational high schools in China visited by the authors’ research teams were not up to the mark by any standards, the book also makes it clear that there is a foundation for more qualitative studies on how and to what extent China’s youth learn for the future. Is it really evident that more practically oriented youngsters from rural China will be unneeded in an urban China where some youngsters have experienced no other life than school?
There are other elements of the book that also call for further studies. When assessing whether China may or may not be able to surpass the middle-income trap, does it then make sense to compare China as a whole to Taiwan, South Korea, and Ireland? Could it be that large prosperous provinces, including both urban and rural areas, have already overcome the middle-income trap while others have only just reached the level of middle income and may not in any foreseeable future, if at all, reach a higher level? When the book examines rural China, is it then overemphasizing the most distant parts and inaccessible parts of the countryside? Should the authors have paid more attention to growing townships to which some migrants return and are able to live with their children and stimulate them more than the children left with grandparents? While it would certainly be interesting to find answers to these questions, it is a quality in the book that might cause readers to raise such questions. The book certainly makes the point that creating more equal opportunities between urban and rural China is far from a done deal, and on top of this it suggests workable solutions that have already been practiced on the ground. Nevertheless, Invisible China works extremely well as a source of inspiration for students, researchers, and practitioners wanting to work with rural China.
Jesper Willaing Zeuthen
Aalborg University, Aalborg