Apologies for the delayed response. I was surprised at not finding a single source (after several minutes of searching) that plotted literacy rates across time, however:
Prior to 1949, China faced a stark literacy rate of only 15 to 25 percent, as well as lacking educational facilities with minimal national curricular goals. But as the Chinese moved into the 1950s under a new leadership and social vision, a national agenda to expand the rate of literacy and provide education for the majority of Chinese youth was underway.
At least naively, this suggests a ~60% absolute change in literacy rates from 1949-~1980, which is higher than in the next 40 years (since you cannot go above 100%).
I think the change here actually understates the impact of the first 30 years, since there’s an obvious delay between the implementation of a schooling system and the adult literacy rate (plus at least naively, we would expect the Cultural Revolution to have wiped out some of the progress).
One thing to flag with cobbling sources together is that there’s a risk of using different (implicit or explicit) operationalizations, so the exact number can’t be relied upon as much.
However, I think it’s significantly more likely than not that under most reasonable operationalizations of adult literacy, the first 30 years of China under CCP rule was more influential than the next 40.
Apologies for the delayed response. I was surprised at not finding a single source (after several minutes of searching) that plotted literacy rates across time, however:
http://schugurensky.faculty.asu.edu/moments/1949china.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271336/literacy-in-china/
At least naively, this suggests a ~60% absolute change in literacy rates from 1949-~1980, which is higher than in the next 40 years (since you cannot go above 100%).
I think the change here actually understates the impact of the first 30 years, since there’s an obvious delay between the implementation of a schooling system and the adult literacy rate (plus at least naively, we would expect the Cultural Revolution to have wiped out some of the progress).
One thing to flag with cobbling sources together is that there’s a risk of using different (implicit or explicit) operationalizations, so the exact number can’t be relied upon as much.
However, I think it’s significantly more likely than not that under most reasonable operationalizations of adult literacy, the first 30 years of China under CCP rule was more influential than the next 40.
Thanks Linch, a better indicator than adult literacy is youth literacy.
In China 1950, for kids aged 15-19 21.86% of boys had no education, for girls 49.9% had no education.
By 1980 for kids 15-19 1.32% of boys and 3.88% of girls had no education. This is a dramatic improvement.
the cultural revolution only stalled increase in education beyond 9th grade, so it had very little effect on literacy rates