I mention this from time to time but it must be remembered that official statistics on literacy are meaningless. Just to take a single country as an example, in China literacy has different definitions depending on what they refer to as one’s “station in life”. There’s one definition of literacy for a subsistence farmer, another for a factory worker, another for professionals, etc. That’s how China achieves its reported 95% literacy rate. What would the real literacy rate be using a uniform high standard? It’s impossible to know but I wouldn’t be surprised at 50% or less.
All literacy statistics are self-reported, each country defines literacy in its own way, and which of a country’s residents are included in its official statistics varies from country to country.
IMO any literacy rate above 95% is probably nonsense and yet many countries claim it. They probably aren’t including the disabled in their statistics and their statndard for literacy may be as basic as being able to recognize your name when you see it written.
Expecting tyrannies not to juice their statistics in their favor is like expecting Trump not to fire off an angry tweet when attacked. It’s the nature of the beast. The problem is too many people swallow these bogus stats and regurgitate them. especially if it puts the US or the West in an unfavorable light, as in ‘Cuba has the best health care system in the world because it has more doctors per capita than any other country!’ Depends what you call a doctor, not to mention a clinic. Potemkin villages of the mind are the most difficult to knock down once the Empress Catherine has floated by.
It’s not just tyrannies. Germany, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, etc. all claim 99% literacy. They all have national languages (in some cases two). I would bet a shiny new dime that the number of new refugees and migrants who aren’t literate in German in Germany is more than 1% of the population. I would also bet that the proportion of the population impaired enough that they can’t read is higher than 1%.