China books of the year in review: Red Roulette and Invisible China

I read a lot of books in 2021, a handful of which were on China. There were two China-related books that really stood out for me: Red Roulette by Desmond Shum, and Invisible China by Scott Rozelle. 

If you take an interest in Chinese affairs, you've probably heard of the first book. It's a memoir by a man who reached the top echelons of China's business world thanks to his marriage to a woman, Whitney Duang, who had cultivated deep connections within the Communist Party's leadership. The couple were central to a number of important deals, including a project to expand Beijing's Capital Airport. Mr. Shum later fell out of favour and left China, while his former wife and business partner was disappeared by the Chinese state. 

The book is a very readable and revealing depiction of how things work at the top of the Chinese system. Shum is from Shanghai, but grew up mostly in colonial Hong Kong and studied in the US, so he possesses both an outsider's and an insider's perspective on China. Others have already analysed Shum's revelations concerning the country's top leaders and their shady deals, and the general conclusion is that he is telling the truth, if perhaps not all of it. 

What I found particularly interesting, though, is the insight the memoir provides regarding the political and psychological factors that motivated Shum and his wife. Billionaires like to think they are moved by more than just greed, and these two were no exception. Once the couple had made it to the top, they convinced themselves that they could use their position to push for broader positive change in China as a whole. 

Shum felt political change would be beneficial to him personally, and thinks other entrepreneurs shared his ideals: "those of us who identified as capitalists wanted a voice. We wanted protection for our property, our investments, and other rights. We wanted, if not an independent judiciary, at least a fair one where judgments were made on the basis of law, and not on the whims of the local party boss. We craved predictability in government policies, because only then could we invest with confidence."

He got involved in philanthropy, creating a scholarship for students from poor regions studying in Tsinghua. He also joined the Beijing branch of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), officially China's "second parliament", which as he says himself was more of a networking platform. "Membership was a sign that the Party saw you as a potentially useful agent of the party's influence." He noticed that bolder members of the body were starting to advocate for democracy within the Party, and he wondered if the CPPCC could become more relevant, like a real second chamber of parliament.

Shums' wife Whitney, who had grown up in anonymity in Shandong, was a Christian, and wished for more religious freedom, or at least a recognition that you could "love god and love China at the same time". Shum and Whitney worked with foreign think tanks to educate Chinese scholars about how democracies work, and around 2010 they funded a European delegation led by Romano Prodi to come to China and have a private chat on foreign policy with Chinese officials. As he puts it, "we tried not to cross any redlines. We truly believed in the promise of China. We were all in." 

Around the turn of the decade, Shum noticed with concern that things had started to change. In 2013 he was summoned to a meeting of the Beijing CPPCC, where a senior official gave a hard-line speech that put to rest any fantasies of democratic reform. Then in 2014, Shum and other CPPCC members from the Hong Kong SARS (the place where he grew up and of which he is a citizen) were directed to go to Hong Kong and take part in an organised counter-protest against the Umbrella Movement. Shum made sure he was seen at the march, even though he didn't really believe in what he was marching for. Quite simply, he was deeply embedded in the system and could not afford to break ranks.

In the end the couple paid the price for having got to the top through the support of prime minister Wen Jiabao's wife. After Xi took office, and Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's allies were purged one by one, this turned into a liability. Meanwhile the couple grew estranged and divorced, after which Shum had to threaten his wife in order to ensure that she gave him a fair amount of the funds from their joint business, since she controlled all their money and the local courts could not be relied upon to protect his interests. Disillusioned with China, he left and made a life for himself in Britain with his son, while his wife met the unfortunate fate of disappearing into detention.

In the end, it is hard to argue with Shum's conclusion that modern China is a harsh, unforgiving place. It must also be said, though, that he comes across as an opportunist who is now spilling the beans because he has nothing left to lose. It is true that it was easier to believe in democratic change back in the 2000s, and I have no doubt that he was genuinely convinced he was helping to steer the country in the right direction. At the same time, I would advance a guess that Shum would never have left China and rejected the system if he had been given a chance to hold on to his billions and his privileged position.

The other book, Invisible China: how the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise, focuses on a problem that tends to be overlooked: the dismal educational and cognitive level of a big chunk of China's population, particularly in the countryside, and how this affects the country's prospects. The book makes a very convincing case that much of the Chinese population is simply not skilled enough to take up the kind of jobs in services that will open up once the manufacturing jobs move to cheaper countries, and this could keep China stuck in the so-called "middle-income trap" that bedevils countries like Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.

The book is co-authored by Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell, two Stanford scholars. The most well known of the two is Rozelle, an American economist who has spent 30 years researching poverty and education in rural China. Over the years he has drawn some criticism for his positions, but he clearly knows what he is talking about. The book uncovers a reality that is not easy to see for those who only experience middle-class urban China. 

First of all, it may be a revelation for some to realise that China's masses are in fact under-educated relative to other countries that are similarly or less developed. In 2015, 70% of working-age adults in China had not completed high-school, compared to 58% in South Africa and 42% in the Philippines. Even among Chinese 25 to 34 year olds, the figure was 60%.

Rozelle and Hell place part of the blame for this on the fact that, during the first decades of the "reform and opening up", public education was not really made a priority by Chinese administrations. School attendance was not mandatory or free of charge, and tuition fees often kept poorer children from going past primary school. Things have changed since then, with the first nine years of schooling made mandatory and free in 2006, and attendance in junior high school becoming almost universal. Even attendance in senior high school is increasing, with 80% of 15 to 17 year olds in school in 2015, up from 53% in 2005.

But these gains are probably insufficient. Educational levels remain worrying low among rural youth. This is hardly a small issue, when you consider that in 2015, 75% of Chinese children under three had a rural hukou, meaning that regardless of where they actually lived, they can be counted as "rural" in terms of their access to education. 

Rozelle and Hell claim that rural schools in China have improved a lot over the last decades. They now have qualified teachers, good facilities, and the same curriculums as everywhere else in the country. Senior high school is still not free, however, and the cost remains considerable for rural families. But there is an even more basic problem: most rural youth in China suffer from cognitive deficiencies and learning difficulties because of problems that begin at home.

First of all, the health of rural children is dismal. Millions of them suffer from iron-deficiency anemia, which is strongly correlated with worse educational outcomes, and intestinal worms. Millions more are short-sighted and are not given the glasses they need, which obviously impacts their schooling. These problems could easily be solved with cheap medication, food supplements and glasses, but they are not addressed because no on understands their importance. Millions of "left-behind children" have parents who work in the cities, and are brought up by grandparents who are usually barely literate, and do not realise that these health issues exist, or believe destructive myths about them (you need intestinal worms to digest your food; if a child wears glasses, their vision will deteriorate further).

What's more, most of these children suffer from a lifelong cognitive deficiency compared to urban children because of they way they are brought up as toddlers. In rural areas caregivers, even if loving, do not talk to their babies and stimulate them in the way that parents naturally do in urban China and in richer countries. Babies may spend hours strapped to their grandmother's back, without any stimulation whatsoever. By the time they are three, they already score worse on cognitive tests compared to urban children, and they will probably carry this disadvantaged throughout their lives. These problems ensure that, no matter how good Chinese rural schools become, or how many children go to them, educational and cognitive levels will remain low. 

The book's arguments are compelling. The countries that made it out of the "middle-income trap" in recent decades, like South Korea and Ireland, all invested heavily in education, and a much higher proportion of the workforce had completed high school by that point compared to China today. If this issue gets so little attention, it may be because most foreign analysts, and the Chinese they talk with, spend so little time in rural China. It is very hard to remember, when you visit the campuses of globally competitive and well-funded universities like Tsinghua, that average educational levels across the country are so low. It is also hard to remember, when you only travel in high-speed trains and only stay in the nicer parts of China's huge and well-run cities, that there is another China, one of unheated rural homes, poverty and left-behind children.

What I find less convincing are the book's general predictions about China. It may well be that, due to the problems it describes and other factors, China will indeed remain stuck in a middle-income state. I find it hard to imagine, as Rozelle and Hell predict, that this could lead to a collapse in law and order, as unemployed and aimless young men turn to crime. Their point of comparison seem to be Mexico and Brazil, societies which have indeed been beset by gang violence and appalling crime rates for decades. This does not mean, however, that things would have to go the same way in China. Countries in Asia that some might describe as falling into the "middle-income trap", like Malaysia, hardly seem to be mired in criminality. China is also far better organised and more regimented than most countries, and it seems unlikely that a massive wave of crime could really take off under the Party's watch. 

It is also a fact that today's "middle-income" China is already an economic and military superpower simply as a function of its size, in spite of its poor rural interior. This was never true of Mexico, Brazil or South Africa. Even if it remains more or less stuck at its current level of development, I see no reason to believe that China cannot continue to be an internally stable and externally assertive power, or that its rulers will stop wanting to remodel the international order in a way that is more congenial to them.