Peter Coy, Columnist

China Has an Achilles’ Heel: Undereducation

A new book says rural youth aren’t acquiring the skills China needs to avoid the dreaded “middle-income trap.”

November 20, 2018 at 4:27 PM UTC

Peter Coy is the economics editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and covers a wide range of economic issues. He also holds the position of senior writer. Coy joined the magazine in December 1989 as telecommunications editor, then became technology editor in October 1992 and held that position until joining the economics staff. He came to BusinessWeek from the Associated Press in New York, where he had served as a business news writer since 1985. Before that, Coy worked as a correspondent in the AP Rochester bureau. He began his career at the AP in 1980 as an editor in the Albany bureau. Prior to that, Coy was a reporter for the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican. Coy holds a BA in history from Cornell University.

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China doesn’t seem undereducated. Its Confucian culture places a high value on learning. Chinese students excel at universities around the world. And in the Program for International Student Assessment in 2015, Chinese 15-year-olds from four provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong) trounced Americans in math and science while trailing just slightly in reading.

Appearances are deceiving, though. In reality, undereducation is a serious problem in China—one that jeopardizes its leaders’ efforts to spring the nation from the dreaded “middle-income trap.” The trap is the slowdown that occurs when factors such as cheap, low-skilled labor that lifted a country from deep poverty don’t work anymore and the country lacks the factors needed to reach the next stage of development. There’s a growing shortage of workers with the education to handle advanced technologies, and that could bring China’s amazing economic progress to a halt in coming years.