For a make-up session: the Chinese economy

In early March, I attended a Saturday seminar, organized by the US-China Institute, on the current state of the Chinese economy. Perhaps because I am not a historian, I was most interested in the presentations that focused on the Chinese workforce, rather than the economy as a whole.
A few themes emerged from the papers presented during this conference, and these were furthered developed during Clay Dube’s classes this spring. One theme was the increasing gap in wealth and education between rural and urban. Rural people are much less likely to attend high school or college, which obviously limits their job opportunities and their potential earning power. In rural areas, Chinese students tend to leave school after junior high in order to join the workforce (and often to leave for the cities). Only 25-30% of rural students attend an academic high school, and only 2-5% attend college, compared to 65% in urban areas. One reason that high school enrollment is so low is that even public high schools aren’t free; in fact, China has the highest public high school tuition rates in the world. The presenter who discussed these figures pointed out that the Chinese government will need to invest more in education, and make it accessible to more people, in order to create a more skilled workforce and allow its population to continue to improve its standard of living.
Another theme that came up was the impact of the one-child policy and the creation of an imbalanced sex ratio. As a result, young men are finding it increasingly hard to find wives, and one way they try to make themselves more attractive to potential mates is to buy or build a house. This is quite expensive and prevents that money from being invested in other areas. This presenter of this paper suggested that this situation may get worse before it gets better, since there will continue to be more men than women in China for some time to come.