Risen from Chaos: What drove the spread of Mass Education in the early 20th century China

This paper uses the Chinese historical path to mass education in the early 20th century to tackle one hotly debated question — what factors explain the rise of public schooling? Given China’s political turmoil and economic backwardness through the early 20th century, the expansion of mass education that was mainly driven by increasing public efforts seems puzzling. Based on a newly assembled dataset, we find that economic factors had little explanatory power in the rise of mass schooling. In contrast, both regional political stability and informal governance imposed by gentry (one important elite group in Chinese history) were critically important. First, we find that counties that previously had more traditional gentry (degree holders via the civil service exam system) provided significantly more public primary schools under the new education system, Therefore, they enjoyed higher primary enrolment ratios. This finding is robust to various checks, including adopting an IV strategy. Secondly, the positive effect of local gentry on mass education development was larger in regions that suffered higher level of administrative instability. The explanation this paper proposes is that the near collapse of formal institution at local level through this political chaotic historical period allowed gentry members, as traditional elites in local communities, to size administrative responsibilities over educational decisions. They deliberately supported mass education because of their own interest in viewing primary schooling as their job market and a potential way to preserve their statues as educated elites. This paper is a chapter of my PhD thesis. I thank Chris Minns and Debin Ma for their continued guidance and support through the past five years. Also, I am very grateful for those constructive discussions with Peter Lindert,Tom Rawski, Kent Deng, and many seminar participants in LSE, Oxford, Warwick and other conferences I have been to.