ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the education system and prospects for education in China. As a social institution, education promotes continuity more than social change. For most of China’s history, education has been a conservative force (Elman and Woodside 1994; Lee 2000). Confucian ideology emphasized the diligent study of books containing moral principles underlying social order, and passing examinations was a path to officialdom in traditional China. With the exception of student activism during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, education was a stabilizing force in Mao’s China. In the post-1978 era – aside from transmitting a state-defined cultural heritage – the function of education is to reproduce social order and unify a multiethnic and rapidly developing nation with growing social and economic inequalities. The education system succeeds in the eyes of each social group and community to the extent that it can deliver on the promise of a better economic future (Postiglione 2006). The state’s task is to orchestrate educational reforms that lead the masses down the path to a better life. In addition, education has to make China’s economy more globally competitive, and to present China to the world community as a highly relevant civilization for the twenty-first century. The latter is to be accomplished through cultural diplomacy, media presence, and hundreds of Confucian Institutes (Wang 2009, Yang 2010). Yet the more formidable task is apparently domestic – making education respond to a diverse population: to rural as well as urban families, to migrants as well as an urban middle class, to ethnic minorities as well as poor rural Han Chinese, to those with disabilities as well as those who are gifted. If compared to education in many developed states, education in China has become less socialist in addressing inequalities. The impressive achieve ment of providing nine years of basic education in more than 95 per cent of the country has become overshadowed by growing inequalities. The richest 10 per cent of society was 23 times richer that the poorest 10 per cent in 2007, a rise since 1998 when it was 7.3 times (Jia 2010). While this may create upheavals in other societies, stability in China is preserved by its cultural heritage that has a preference for harmonious socio-political development. As economic indicators rise for a nation of one-child families, quality of life has become a priority and education is increasingly expected to be relevant to it.