China is improving its human capital. Gradually

In their book “Invisible China”, published in 2020, Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell of Stanford University tell the dispiriting tale of Wang Tao, who grew up on the edge of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Every year he took weeks off school to help his parents harvest rapeseed and watermelon from their small plot of land. He was a class monitor in middle school and studied diligently for entry into high school (which typically begins at age 15 or 16). But his grades fell a little short and his parents could not afford the extra entrance fee the school demanded. Instead he enrolled in a new vocational high school. But the teachers were wooden or mumbly and the students absent or sleepy. The maths teacher would sometimes stop by their dorms to sell cigarettes. Mr Wang dropped out in his first year.