D ELI GHT S| BOOKS
China: A hidden workforce and education crisis
Christina Spencer
Invisible China: How the urban-rural divide threatens China’s rise Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell University of Chicago Press, 2020 242 pages Kindle: $29.39 Hardcover: $35
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China's dominance of low-cost manufacturing is waning, which may cause major disruption to the world’s second-largest economy in the medium and long term, according to a new book on the urban-rural divide in the country. Shown here is very urban Shanghai.
have found over time prompts concern for China’s economic and social future. China is firmly among what are called middle-income countries — where the aggregate economy is huge, but actual average incomes are still low. The country miraculously and rapidly climbed from poverty into middle-income status through its supply of cheap labour.
Unskilled workers — which is what China’s rural population is mostly made up of — were able to shift from subsistence living to better wages through the assembly-line work available as major international companies located production in countries with low costs. But as this plentiful workforce gradually became employed, there was less cheap labour on SUMMER 2021 | JUL-AUG-SEPT
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ne recent, pre-COVID-era Christmas, I searched out the neighbourhood Canadian Tire for an instant-read thermometer, a gift for the cook in the family. There were several types on display, and out of curiosity, I started to scan the “Made in …” labels to see if I could find one not manufactured in China. No luck. I widened my informal survey to other kitchenalia in the store. Again, all made in China. This would not surprise anyone: China is a global powerhouse of manufacturing. Fully 95 per cent of the world’s major companies have based some of their supply chain there. As a result, China has enjoyed a huge growth spurt in recent decades. But its dominance of low-cost manufacturing is waning, and this may cause severe disruption to the world’s second-largest economy in the medium and long term. This, in turn, will ripple globally. That’s the warning offered in Invisible China, based on decades of exhaustive onthe-ground research by the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) at Stanford University. Partnered with institutions in China, its mission is to understand poverty in rural China and propose solutions. Its huge web of researchers has travelled and talked to hundreds of thousands of people, focused not in the booming cities of Shanghai or Guangzhou, but in the countryside, where REAP experts strive to understand the lives of the two thirds of Chinese who are not part of the country’s successful urban elite. What they
