ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the current scholarly debate on Chinese education. At the risk of gross oversimplification, it is possible to see much work in this area as strongly influenced by four perspectives. The first, involving adherence to officially sanctioned orthodoxy, involves endorsement of the policy choices of the past forty years, typically allied to claims that these have been necessitated by China's 'special characteristics' and the unique challenges of her 'national situation'. The second, labelled the 'anti-globalist' position, recognises a more mixed picture as far as the record of the post-Mao period is concerned, but tends to attribute negative aspects of this primarily to the malign influence of external forces – 'global capitalism', 'neoliberalism', and so forth – confronting 'developing' China. The third, labelled the 'practice-oriented' position, focuses on educational problems or issues with a view to identifying practical 'solutions'. Finally, a cross-disciplinary 'critical' perspective is defined by a concern with exploring education's relationships with social, political and ideological tensions.
