ABSTRACT
Upper secondary education in mainland China (China, hereafter) experienced a dramatic expansion during the period of 1980–2010. China is an illuminating case for analyzing the expansion of upper secondary education. This is not only because China’s upper secondary education has undergone a transformation from elite, mass, and universal form for the last thirty years amid the rapid economic development since the economic reform in 1978. This study mainly adopts the functionalism perspective to interpret China’s expansion of upper secondary education.
