I'm going to go with yes. 97% isn't an unreasonable literacy rate for a country, being similar to those of Greece, the Philippines, Turkey, and Chile. It would also make sense given the emphasis that has been put on education
Forgive me for being sceptical. I've worked with a lot of Chinese researchers who have said outright that I should never cite a paper from China unless it's published in nature or I know the authors personally (because it's so often falsified).