Scott Rozelle is a development economist who has spent more than three decades researching rural development in China. His new book Invisible China, written with Natalie Hell, warns of a growing divide between urban and rural China in terms of education and health, as well as income. Scott is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He also directs the Rural Education Action Plan and is a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Scott Rozelle.Illustration by Kate Copeland
Q: In your book, Invisible China, you paint a stark portrait of rural China and those left behind in the country’s economic boom, and you offer some dire warnings about the consequences of such a large and potentially growing underclass. Can you tell us how and why they’ve been left behind?
A: Well, China has 1.4 billion people, and nearly 70 percent of them are rural. That’s mo
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