Citizenship Education In China

There is a flourishing literature on citizenship education in China that is mostly unknown in the West. Liberal political theorists often assume that only in democracy should citizens be prepared for their future responsibilities, yet citizenship education in China has undergone a number of transformations as the political system has sought to cope with market reforms, globalization and pressures both externally and within the country for broader political reforms. Over the past decade, Chinese scholars have been struggling for official recognition of citizenship education as a key component of the school curriculum in these changing contexts. This book analyzes the citizenship education issues under discussion within China, and aims to provide a voice for its scholars at a time when China’s international role is becoming increasingly important.

A key objective of education in China is to cultivate one’s moral values, with the ultimate objective of becoming fully human (做人). Unlike the “West,” which regards moral cultivation as related to but separate from citizenship cultivation, East Asia (including China) views moral and citizenship cultivation as synonymous. The essays in this book offer various perspectives on and understandings of Chinese citizenship and education by a group of scholars of Chinese heritage situated inside and outside of China. They offer compelling evidence and rich theoretical discussions about the practice of teaching citizenship in the state education, the interplay between citizenship and China’s cultural and religious traditions, and the construction of citizenship from the groups from marginal positions. The book uses citizenship as a lens to examine the pressing issues of identity, democracy, religion and cosmopolitanism and sheds new light on China’s ongoing social and educational changes. Thinking through citizenship and citizenship education may act as an important driving force to transform the culture and paradigms of governance in China and the new meanings of becoming fully human. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Education, Politics, Sociology and Public Policy. The chapters in this book were originally published in various Routledge journals.

Two assumptions prevail in the study of Chinese citizenship: one holds that citizenship is unique to the Western political culture, and China has historically lacked the necessary conditions for its development; the other implies that China is an authoritarian regime that has always been subject to autocratic power, in which citizens and citizenship play a limited role. This volume negates both assumptions. On the one hand, it shows that China has its own unique and rich experiences of the emergence, development, rights, obligations, acts, culture, education, and sites of citizenship, indicating the need to widen the scope of citizenship studies to include non-Western societies. On the other hand, it aims to show that citizenship has been a core issue running through China's political development since the modern period, urging scholars to bring ‘citizenship’ into consideration in the study of Chinese politics. This Handbook sets a new agenda for citizenship studies and Chinese politics. Its clear, accessible style makes it essential reading for students and scholars interested in citizenship and China studies.

This book examines issues of citizenship, citizenship education, and social change in China, exploring the complexity of interactions among global forces, the nation-state, local governments, schools, and individuals - including students - in selecting and identifying with elements of citizenship and citizenship education in a multileveled polity. It also provides a clear, detailed guide to studies on China, discussing the country's responses to global challenges and social transitions for over a century - from its military defeats by foreign powers in the 1840s to its rise as a world power in the early 21st century - on its path toward reviving the nation and making a modern Chinese citizenry. Citizenship and Citizenship Education in a Global Age is accessible to readers in the fields of sociology, globalization, citizenship studies, comparative education, and China's development.

In recent years citizenship has emerged as a very important topic in the sciences, mainly as a result of the effects of migration, population displacements and cultural heterogeneity. This book focuses on educational enterprise and how it affects national ambitions, cultural preferences and political trends. It also examines the major effects of globalisation, the large-scale movements of populations, and the impact this all has in terms of education and citizenship. With contributions from an array of international scholars including Etienne Balibar, and featuring various international case studies, Manufacturing Citizenship will be extremely interesting to the education academic community as well as many readers within cultural studies and politics.

Based on case studies of 11 societies in the world’s most dynamic region, this book signals a new direction of study at the intersection of citizenship education and the curriculum. Following their successful volume, Citizenship Education in Asia and the Pacific: Concepts and Issues (published as No. 14 in this series), the editors, widely regarded as leaders in the field in the Asia-Pacific region, have gone beyond broad citizenship education frameworks to examine the realities, tensions and pressures that influence the formation of the citizenship curriculum. Chapter authors from different societies have addressed two fundamental questions: (1) how is citizenship education featured in the current curriculum reform agenda in terms of both policy contexts and values; and (2) to what extent do the reforms in citizenship education reflect current debates within the society? From comparative analysis of these 11 case studies the editors have found a complex picture of curriculum reform that indicates deep tensions between global and local agendas. On one hand, there is substantial evidence of an increasingly common policy rhetoric in the debates about citizenship education. On the other, it is evident that this discourse does not necessarily extend to citizenship curriculum, which in most places continues to be constructed according to distinctive social, political and cultural contexts. Whether the focus is on Islamic values in Pakistan, an emerging discourse about Chinese ‘democracy’, a nostalgic conservatism in Australia, or a continuing nation-building project in Malaysia – the cases show that distinctive social values and ideologies construct national citizenship curricula in Asian contexts even in this increasingly globalized era. This impressive collection of case studies of a diverse group of societies informs and enriches understanding of the complex relationship between citizenship education and the curriculum both regionally and globally.

Though certainly not a new idea, citizenship education manifests in unique and often unpredictable ways in our contemporary neoliberal era. The question of what it means to be a productive and recognized citizen must now be understood simultaneously along both global and local lines. This edited volume offers an international perspective on citizenship education enacted in specific socio-political contexts. Each chapter includes a pointed conceptualization of citizenship education—a philosophical framework—that is then applied to specific national cases across Europe, Asia, Canada and more. Chapters emphasize how such frameworks are implemented within local contexts, encouraging particular pedagogical/curricular practices even as they constrain others. Chapters conclude with suggestions for productive change and how educators might usefully engage contemporary contexts through citizenship education.

This volume theorizes the concept of citizenship in contemporary China by probing into the formation of Chinese citizenship and synthesizing the practices of citizenship by different social groups. The first section, “Imagining Chinese Citizenship,” analyses how Chinese citizenship was first imagined by means of translation and education at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Chinese citizenship was then compared with the concept of Western citizenship and that of other Asian countries. The second section, “Citizenship of Chinese Migrant Workers,” explains the citizenship status of migrant workers by discussing the relationship between household registration (hukou) system and citizenship of the migrant workers, showing how migrant workers contest their citizenship rights and categorizing the resistance of migrant workers from the perspective of citizenship. Finally, the last section, “Chinese Citizenship Education,” discusses the conditions and challenges of citizenship education in Chinese schools.