Invisible China by Scott Rozelle. The book focuses on rural China and it's challenges. The gist of the book is that countries generally move from low to middle income by doing cheap labor. The move from middle to high income requires a educated workforce. If you don't have enough educated workers across the board you fall into the middle income trap where you have large structural unemployment and get high crime. This happened to Mexico and Brazil for example. China's rural population struggles with a low education level. The author investigated why. The answers come down to a mix of health issues, lack of education on how to raise babies, dysfunction in the education system and the houku system.

Short interesting read for anyone interested in China or development economics. The book does a great job composting to other countries and showing that way how development works and doesn't.