ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the Chinese state tried to use citizenship education to maintain its authority in the face of the livelihood challenges arising from the new market economy. Drawing on research I conducted in 2000 in Rivercounty, a poor and marginal rural area in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, I show how the Chinese state tried to deal with the pressures of global market integration and the imperatives of neoliberalism by subjecting farmers to citizenship education projects that emphasized responsibilities rather than rights. One project involved equipping local cadres with the knowledge and attitudes that would make them willing and able to work benevolently and honestly to promote modernization on behalf of rural people (Thøgersen 2003). Another project involved inculcating in farmers the rational, modern and scientific qualities that were necessary for them to be law-abiding citizens who would promote prosperity within their communities. Despite their ostensibly empowering promises, these kinds of citizenship education served to preserve the topdown structure of rural society and maintain the position of farmers as perpetually marginalized subjects of development.
