China's economic miracle has produced gleaming cities and a growing middle class, but economists Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell reveal a crisis hidden in plain sight: hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens lack the education and health to participate in a modern economy. Drawing on decades of fieldwork in rural China, the authors present alarming data showing that 70 percent of China's workforce has not completed high school, while cognitive delays affect enormous numbers of children due to untreated anemia, parasites, and poor nutrition. Rozelle, a Stanford economist who has conducted research in China for thirty years, and Hell document how China's rural-urban divide has created two nations: one increasingly prosperous and educated, the other trapped in subsistence farming with children who fall behind before they enter school. The book examines specific interventions that could address these gaps, from deworming programs to early childhood education, while analyzing why China's government has been slow to invest in human capital development. The authors argue that China's trajectory poses risks not just for its own population but for global stability, as an economy dependent on cheap labor cannot sustain growth when that labor force lacks basic skills. This research challenges triumphalist narratives about China's rise by showing the profound human costs of uneven development.