ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the practices and effects of parent-initiated school choice in China, a program that has significant differences from government-led parental choice in the West. It illuminates school choice as a site of contestation by linking the specificity of choice practices in China to its historical, social, political, ideological structures. The chapter takes up what Nancy Fraser calls the politics of "redistribution", "recognition", and "representation" to uncover how the (re)articulation of school choice practices and Chinese social and educational reforms also entails social injustice. It will not only document how "thin" democracy leads to educational inequality and social injustice, but it also will "point to contradictions and to spaces of possible action". The chapter tracks the development of the school choice movement in China genealogically and maps the play of some particularly profound social forces in this process.
