China Chats with Stanford Faculty - "Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise"

China Chats with Stanford Faculty

"Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise"

Friday, March 12, 2021 5 PM - 6 PM PDT

Saturday, March 13, 2021 9 AM - 10 AM Beijing

 

As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as FSI Senior Fellow Scott Rozelle shows in his new book Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. 

Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle reveals that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. The low levels of basic education of such a large share of workers may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and as manufacturing jobs both begin to automate and move elsewhere 

In this Stanford alumni event, Rozelle, who is also the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, will be joined by Hongbin Li, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the book. 

A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

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About the Speakers:

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the China Center for Agricultural Policy in Peking University. In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

 

 

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