BOOK REVIEW: Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise

By Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell. The University of Chicago Press. Hardcover, 248 pp, US$23.93

One of the many contradictions of modern Chinese history is the way a revolution fought primarily by and on behalf of its peasants became a government which has always, even during Mao’s time, in practice always favored the cities over the countryside. China has even carried the urban bias to an extreme seen in few other countries, or even the Soviet Un…