China’s urban-rural gap is a threat to growth. Is the divide too wide to fix?


Zheng Yajun, a mainland-born PhD graduate of the University of Hong Kong, knows from personal experience how difficult it is to break through China’s urban-rural divide.

Raised and educated in a remote small town in the northwestern province of Gansu, Zheng sat for the national college entrance examination twice before she was admitted to Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University in 2009.

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