National Committee On United States-china Relations

As its glittering urban skylines attest, China has apparently quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, however, that the truth is much more complicated and perhaps deeply concerning. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never attended high school. The unskilled wage rate has been rising for more than a decade, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of those seeking cheaper labor elsewhere. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Dr. Rozelle and Ms. Hell demonstrate that its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any country with a similarly large economy. The limited education of so many workers may leave them unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and ma