The People's Republic May Neglect People By Starving Schools
China is not a rich country yet. It seems to think that the best way to become a rich country is to build things.
Yellow construction cranes punctuate the skyline in every direction here. A new $1 billion-plus magnetic-levitation train makes the trip to the airport in seven minutes at a peak speed of 250 miles per hour, drawing more families taking weekend joy rides than airport-bound travelers. The TV news is full of boasts that China is now the third nation to put its own man in space.
But is China investing too heavily in things and not enough in people? Does its edifice complex threaten its future prosperity? Will it yield an ever-wider gap between haves and have-nots?
James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago, thinks so. A couple of years ago, he toured Chinese factories on the way to a conference on capital markets in the southern city of Chongqing. "They buy fancy equipment and they can't run it," he says. "There are a lot of skilled Chinese, but there are even more machines that need skilled workers." With those factories fresh in his mind, he talked at the conference not about financial markets, but about China's myopic policies toward what economists call "human capital." He says a lot of heads in the audience nodded in agreement. (A paper by Prof. Heckman on human capital investment in China is available at the National Bureau of Economic Research Web site.)
China spends less on education than other developing countries, according to United Nations tallies. In 1998-99, the latest data available, China spent a sum equal to 2.2% of its gross domestic product on education and roughly 15 times that amount on physical capital. Turkey spent 2.9% on education, India 3.2%, Russia 3.5% and the Philippines 4.2%. (The U.S. spent 5%.)
There are signs that may be changing. College enrollments are swelling. The official People's Daily says 2.5 million will graduate from college next year, up from 1.2 million in 2001. There is a glut of recent college grads in the big cities who can't find jobs there.
But children of migrants from the countryside to big cities aren't welcome in local public schools. Available data suggest paltry public spending on elementary and secondary schooling in China's poorer western provinces. In some places, peasants would have to spend half their incomes to pay school fees.
This could be a colossal mistake. For all the dazzling technology of the 20th century, the secret of American prosperity was in education -- from the transformation of American high schools to serve all comers to the government-financed march of returning World War II soldiers to college.
Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley, says Manchester, England, circa 1850, illustrates the dangers of neglecting education. "Few in Manchester noticed that the British government was not building schools for children of workers migrating in from the countryside to the jobs in the new factories," he has written. "Yet it was clear to keen-eyed observers even then that industrial technology was rapidly becoming both closely linked with science and increasingly sophisticated. By the end of the 19th century the lack of a well-schooled work force meant that the post-steam-engine technologies of electricity, metallurgy and chemistry found themselves much more at home in late 19th century Germany -- where investments in schools had been made."
"Thus," he adds, "Britain entered the 20th century...having a squandered a large initial edge in technology and productivity."
China's recent economic success is impressive. But it can last only if it shifts resources away from public-works projects and skyscrapers toward schools, Prof. Heckman cautions. The benefits of education may not be as visible or quick as deploying workers to put up an office tower, but they are longer lasting.
China seeks to balance growing its economy and restraining the inequality that often accompanies development. It has tolerated a growing gap between rich and poor as it abandons communist precepts and allows salaries of educated workers to rise. Too big a gap risks social unrest. The remedy is education: It can lift the productivity and wages of those left behind and their children.
There are signs that some Chinese leaders, though fixated on "mag lev" trains and space rockets, get this. Prof. Heckman has been invited back for a December conference on human resources at Beijing's Great Hall of the People. But when he proposed calling his presentation "China Neglects Investment in Human Capital," conference organizers winced. So his talk is titled simply, "China's Investment in Human Capital."
繁荣背后的教育危机
中国还不是一个富裕的国家。而在它看来，致富的最佳途径似乎是大兴土木。
黄色的起重机随处可见。新建的造价超出10亿美元的磁悬浮列车以每小时250英里的速度使上海市区到机场只需7分钟，这吸引了许多家庭周末前来乘坐，这些观光的人甚至比真正外出旅行去机场的旅客还要多。电视新闻里充斥著对中国已经成为世界上第三个能发射载人航天飞船的国家的溢美之词。
但中国是否太重视物质投资，而轻视人力投资？那些高楼大厦是否威胁著中国未来的繁荣？富人与穷人之间的贫富差距是否越来越大？
芝加哥大学的经济学家、诺贝尔获奖者詹姆士?赫克曼(James Heckman)对此持肯定态度。几年前，在赴中国重庆参加一个关于资本市场的会议的途中，他参观了国内的一些工厂。赫克曼说："他们购买价格昂贵的设备，但却不会操作。中国有许多技术工人，但需要技术工人的机器却更多。"这件事给赫克曼留下了深刻的印象，于是他在会议上没有探讨资本市场，而是谈论中国对于"人力资本"的短视政策。他的话引起了与会听众广泛的共鸣。
根据联合国的统计，中国在教育上的投资低于其他发展中国家。根据最新的统计资料，在1998至1999年，中国的教育经费相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的2.2%，而实物资本的投资大约是这一数字的15倍。相比之下，土耳其的教育经费是其GDP的2.9%、印度是3.2%、俄罗斯是3.5%，菲律宾是4.2%。（美国是5%。）
不过有迹象表明情况可能正在发生变化。大学的招生人数不断增加。官方媒体《人民日报》称，明年将有250万大学生毕业，而2001年只有120万。近几年，大城市的高校毕业生出现过剩，致使一些毕业生找不到工作。
但到城市打工的农民的孩子却遭到了当地公立中小学校的冷遇。有关数据显示，在贫困的西部地区，政府对中小学的拨款少得可怜。在一些地方，农民们不得不把一半的收入用来支付孩子的学费。
这是个天大的错误。二十世纪的科技令人眼花缭乱，而美国兴旺发达的秘密就是重视教育：美国改革了高中体制，使所有新来的孩子都能上学；政府还资助二战归来的士兵进入大学进行学习。 加利福尼亚州州立大学伯克利分校(the University of California at Berkeley)的经济史学家布拉德?德朗(Brad DeLong)以1850年的英国城市曼彻斯特为例，说明了忽视教育的危害性。他在文中写道："当时只有极少数曼彻斯特人发现，英国政府没有为那些到新建的工厂打工的民工的孩子兴建学校。但是，目光锐利的观察者们已经清楚地觉察到，工业技术与科学的联系将日益紧密，而且会越来越复杂。到十九世纪末，英国变得十分缺乏受过良好教育的劳动者，而在早些年大力投资办学的德国，后蒸汽机时代的电力技术、冶金技术和化学技术纷纷繁荣起来。"
德朗补充说："进入二十世纪时，英国在技术和生产率方面的领先优势已大大丧失。"
中国经济取得了令世人瞩目的成就。但只有中国政府将财力从公共设施工程和高楼大厦转移到学校教育，这种成功才能持久。教育带来的好处不会像兴建办公楼那么显而易见、立杆见影，但这些好处会更加持久。
当前，中国正努力在发展经济以及控制因经济发展造成的贫富差距之间寻找平衡。中国放弃了平均主义，允许拉开贫富差距，并提高受过教育的工人的工资。但差距过大会导致社会的动荡。而教育正是一剂良方：它能提高生产率，并使那些贫困人口及其子女的工资水平得到提高。
有迹象显示，一些只是盯著磁悬浮列车和太空火箭的中国领导人已经认识到这一点。赫克曼教授已经被邀请参加定于12月份在中国人民大会堂举行的一个关于人力资源的会议。但当他提出要将演讲题目定为"中国忽视人力资本投资"时，会议主办人踌躇了。于是，他的演讲主题只好改成"中国的人力资本投资状况"。
