National Review Underestimates Chinese Workers

Conservatives in America are fed a regular diet of nonsense on China by the conservative press. I have been allowed to rebut such nonsense in The Stream and in Quillette.  But one of the worst offenders, National Review, which I have read since college, does not allow anyone to puncture its balloons.   

A few days ago, "China expert" Therese Shaheen gave NR readers another test of their gullibility. Most readers, having been brainwashed, seemed to fail that test.  Let's examine just one claim from her article denigrating Chinese economic prospects:

"And as many as 700 million working-age people in China have a grade school education or less."

How credible is that? Let's see, there are some 900 million people of working age in China.

And 162 million Chinese seem to have tertiary education. 

So for Shaheen's claim to be correct, no more than 38 million people in China have just a middle school or high school education.

Never mind that the number of secondary students was 85% of the number of primary students in 2020, and constituted the vast majority of children of school ages:

Total 250.5 million

Primary 107.5 million

Secondary 90.8 million1

Post secondary 52.2 million

Furthermore, when I first arrived, a high school education was considered pretty advanced in China.  Many students had to leave school during the Cultural Revolution, and play catchup on their own.  So it is simply not credible that only 38 million Chinese have a middle school or high school education but no post-secondary education.  

Of course, one could posit that all such figures are fake, though Shaheen gives no source for her alternative reality.

But beyond the dubious character of Shaheen's alleged "fact," being a very ignorant "China scholar," she also overlooks the significance of the fact that yes, some Chinese workers have little formal education.

Many of those workers are farmers, whose ancestors have farmed the land for centuries. That doesn't stop them from being innovative: China's farm products have dramatically improved, I know from first-hand experience.

Others entered the workforce as former farmers when China was developing, and went into occupations like construction, delivery, and cleaning. During those careers, the percent of those attaining higher education increased dramatically. Poorly-educated old people will retire, and maybe be replaced by tech. (Few young people want their jobs.) Their level of education is irrelevant to the question Shaheen applies it: China's future economic prospects.

National Review's philosophy seems to be that China is our enemy, and the best way to defeat an enemy is by underestimating them.