Literacy and rurality in China: a scoping review

Abstract Literacy education and policy have long been central to China’s national development agenda, particularly within rural areas where disparities in access and outcomes remain acute. This scoping review maps the existing literature on literacy policy and implementations in China with a specific focus on how literacy challenges manifest across urban-rural divides. This review identifies and analyses eight eligible studies published between 2003 and 2025 in English and Chinese. Our findings indicate a persistent gap in literacy outcomes between rural and urban populations, shaped by factors such as limited educational infrastructure, weak policy enforcement, economic pressures, and health-related challenges. Moreover, we highlight the under-representation of rural and adult literacy in international academic literature, and argue that current research remains insufficient to fully capture the lived realities of literacy within China’s rural communities. This review contributes to raising awareness of the multifaceted challenges of literacy education across urban and rural areas in China, and points to the need for a dedicated and multi-perspectival research agenda for literacy that prioritises contextually-grounded and ethnographically informed approaches which illuminate how literacy is lived and experienced in China’s rural communities. In doing so, it can provide a valuable basis for comparative studies in regions facing similar literacy challenges.