The meaning of life in China’s civics curriculum: A comparative historical study on worldview construction

ABSTRACT

Although research conducted worldwide has pinpointed the importance of the cultivation of worldviews in citizenship education, little is known of how worldviews are constructed in the civics curriculum. In this study, we adopted a comparative historical approach to examine how China’s civics curriculum has interpreted the meaning of life for young citizens during the transformation of the country from an empire into a nation-state. The data were drawn from 210 school textbooks published between 1902 and 2020. Four historical periods were delineated: the late Qing and Republican era, the Maoist era, the Deng Xiaoping era, and the current Xi Jinping administration. The findings demonstrated the trends and changes that took place while the ideal of citizenship and citizenship education took root, driving the modernisation of Chinese society. Through this study, we contribute to the theoretical discussions on enriching civics curriculum development from a humanist perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• worldviews
• citizenship education
• moral education
• meaning of life

Introduction

During imperial times, the purpose of Chinese education was to train the literati for the civil service examination. This educational system focussed on teaching the Confucian classics. The meaning of life in Confucian tradition tends to be framed in terms of morality, with an emphasis on an individual’s actualisation of their responsibility (Hwang, 2001; Kim & Seachris, 2018; Yao, 1999). China’s modern, subject-based school system began its rise in 1902, when the late Qing government started educational reform (Zarrow, 2015), then became increasingly popular during the era of the Republic of China (ROC), which was established in 1912 but moved to Taiwan in 1949. During the following decades, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC, 1949–present), modern schooling was further universalised nationwide in mainland China. In this century-long social transition, the civics subject was fashioned to transform imperial subjects into the citizens of a new nation-state, and civics remains an important school subject that has profoundly influenced Chinese students’ worldviews and values throughout regimes (Guo, 2021).

In this study, we examined how China’s civics curriculum has interpreted the meaning of life for young citizens during the transformation of society from an empire into a modern nation-state. We delineated four historical periods in our analysis of the texts on narrating ‘life’ (shengming) in 210 school textbooks published between 1902 and 2020, referring to Phillips' (2002, 2006, 2014) comparative approach of ‘periodisation’ to educational inquiry. The four periods are the late Qing and Republican era (ruled by non-socialist regimes and dominated by a mosaic of ideologies concerned with modernising Chinese society); the Maoist era (the period headed by Mao Zedong, which adopted revolutionary policies to proactively pursue a communist agenda); the Deng Xiaoping era, in which China embraced a market economy, heralding economic liberalisation and globalisation (Lee & Ho, 2008; Tse, 2011); and the current administration under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, which claims to explore a unique model of modernisation for China (Brown & Bērziņa-Čerenkova, 2018; Chen, 2023; Chong et al., 2018). The comparative historical analysis aimed to reveal similarities and differences in the discourses in the civics curriculum during China’s societal transitions.

We first review the international literature to discuss the relationship between education for citizenship and the cultivation of worldviews before moving on to the development of the civics curriculum in China. The next section explains our methodology. Then, we present our main findings, first by mapping the four views of life constructed in the curriculum narratives and then by focussing on the interpretations of the meaning of life for individual citizens’ socio-political participation. We conclude by examining trends and changes in the curriculum between the relevant historical periods and discuss the role of a humanist perspective in enriching the development of the civics curriculum.

Education for citizenship and worldview construction

Citizenship in nation-states traditionally refers to the institutionalisation of individual citizens’ rights and responsibilities, but in the broader sociological sense, it includes ‘the practices, discourses, technologies, and forms of power involved in governing individuals and populations’ (Rygiel, 2014, p. 63). Owens (2012, p. 298) traced the rise of citizenship in modern society and found that with the development of the social realm in the late eighteenth century, the state started to administer peoples’ lives ‘in the interests of order and capital accumulation’. The governing of life is closely related to the practice of citizenship, but fashioning students’ worldviews is more complicated. The primary source of complexity lies in individuals’ respective outlooks on life, which depend on the value frameworks of society or on their personal socio-cultural experiences (Crossley, 2008). For example, in a comparative study of Japan and the United States, Kawai and Moran (2017) revealed the effects of cultural differences on the framing of self in society and the understanding of life’s purposes. In an empirical study, Balthip et al. (2017) showed that Thai students perceived sacrifice and awareness of their responsibility to society as a life purpose. In Taiwan, where there is a long tradition of deepening students’ understanding of worldviews by treating it as an independent school subject, self-actualisation is viewed as the purpose of education (Gao et al., 2015). Research has also shown that even within the same society, regulating and administering life can generate different understandings among students that are closely associated with their perceptions of citizens’ roles. For example, Olson et al. (2015) studied a group of Swiss upper secondary school students’ understandings of citizenship and revealed two contrasting life views. The first was a responsive, holistic view that emphasised experience and experiencing life for its ‘collective benefit and aesthetic responsiveness’ (Olson et al., 2015, p. 1048). The second was an individualistic ‘free’ view holding that a citizen is someone who ‘should decide about her/his own life, and who uses the space provided by structures, rules and regulations in the society in which she/he lives to actualise wishes and visions for future life-course’ (Olson et al., 2015, p. 1046).

Although research has shown that students’ views on life relate to their understanding of citizenship, limited attention has been given to examining what ‘life’ means for the development of the civics curriculum. Education’s contribution to children’s ability to find life’s meaning and to understand different worldviews is a complicated issue, one not confined within the boundary of citizenship education (Schinkel et al., 2016). The development of students’ worldviews is a longstanding tradition in religious and spiritual education, as well as in secular ethics and moral education (Ebels-Duggan, 2013; Iliško, 2017; Lee et al., 2021; Shaw, 2022; Van der Kooij et al., 2015, 2017). This study follows the conception of worldview of Van der Kooij et al. (2017), which refers to ‘a view on life, world, and humanity’ that addresses existential questions on ‘the essence of a person’s life’ including both ‘religious and secular views on life’ (pp. 173–174). Ebels-Duggan (2013, p. 42) noted that how to address issues related ‘to the various, conflicting worldviews reasonable citizens affirm’ in state-sponsored education is a central question for political liberals. Researchers such as Nussbaum (2018) and Veugelers (2007, 2011, 2020) have pinpointed the importance of a humanist perspective in enriching the development of citizenship education by cultivating open worldviews. Two main arguments have emerged in the theoretical literature. First, democratic citizenship education highlights individual autonomy, which means ‘the experience of freedom’ and the empowerment of the individual citizen in giving meaning to their own life (Veugelers, 2020, p. 24). Second, the civics curriculum should help to bridge different values and traditions and help students to understand and appreciate different worldviews (Crossley, 2008; Iliško, 2017; Shaw, 2022). That has become pressing, given the increasing encounters with the diversity of the globalised world.

China presents an interesting setting for examining the role of the relationship between citizenship and moral education in influencing young people’s worldviews, as the development of the civics curriculum over the past century shows the interplay of citizenship, China’s traditional morality, and a variety of ideologies in orienting people to make sense of their lives (Halstead & Pike, 2006, Kennedy et al., 2014; Lee, 2010; Lee & Ho, 2005; Lin & Jackson, 2022). In the following section, we examine the historical development of the civics curriculum in China and discuss the different ideological forces shaping students’ worldviews.

Civics curriculum in China and rising concern over the meaning of life

When the notions of citizenship and citizenship education were first introduced in Chinese society at the end of the nineteenth century, local discussions viewed these new concepts as being close to individualism, which was regarded as a new philosophy of life that traditional Chinese cultures lacked (Guo, 2014). Throughout the Chinese regimes in the twentieth century, civics always served as a primary arena for the transmission of the dominant ideologies, moulding students’ national identity and ascribing aspirational values.

The Chinese paradigm of citizenship education is grounded in Chinese cultural and political tradition but integrates the Western conception of citizenship (Guo, 2021). Since its development at the turn of twentieth century, civics has covered a wide range of topics related to morality, civic learning, mental and psychological well-being as spiritual values, cultivation of patriotism, and political and ideological education (Kennedy et al., 2014; Lee, 2010; Lee & Ho, 2005, 2008; Lee et al., 2021). It is worth noting that although modern China’s civics subjects have introduced knowledge of world religions, religious worldviews tend to be excluded in the development of national citizenship, especially in the PRC (Fairbrother & Zhao, 2016). However, spiritual views entailing secular views of life are relevant to the context of mainland China (Lee et al., 2021).

The scholarship on the development of the civics curriculum reveals that three main ideological forces may influence students’ worldviews (e.g., Kennedy et al., 2014; Lee, 2010; Lee & Ho, 2005; Lin & Jackson, 2022; Tse, 2011; Vickers, 2009). First, the emergence of the notion of citizenship closely relates to the building of a new nation-state—the various Chinese regimes have supported ‘state-centred conceptions of citizenship’ that highlight citizens’ duties to the state (White & Hunt, 2000, p. 96). With this, the civics curriculum in effect in the late Qing, ROC, and PRC eras intended to arouse students’ awareness of the national community and embrace the ideology of nationalist patriotism (Guo, 2021; Kennedy et al., 2014; Zarrow, 2015). Second, a moralised conception of citizenship highlights collective moral duties instead of an individual citizen’s exercise of rights (Lee, 2010; Lee & Ho, 2005; Vickers, 2009). Van der Kooij et al. (2015, p. 83) argued that developing a person’s worldview relates to a broad morality that goes beyond establishing ‘basic rules and principles necessary for social life’ and focuses on the issue of ‘living a flourishing life’ with regard to both others and the self. This echoes the Chinese context, in which the Confucian tradition presents an outlook of broad morality promoting a moral and spiritual life that values one’s own responsibility (Yao, 1999). Vickers (2009) analysed the curriculum for Thought and Character (Sixiang Pinde), which was widely used in the Deng era, and found that the curriculum emphasised citizenship duties that bound everyone to the collective rather than the rights that each person held against the group. Recently, Lin and Jackson (2022) indicated a moralisation of patriotism, suggesting an integration of the first two forces of state-centred citizenship and the primacy of the collective. The third force is the political ideologies that are taught alongside citizenship. The civics curriculum in the PRC period has involved continuous debates over ‘the definition and redefinition of socialist ideologies’ (Lee & Ho, 2005, p. 418). Based on an analysis of textbooks published between 1997 and 2005, Tse (2011) argued that the teaching of political ideologies was reconciled with the notion of human rights and global citizenship. During recent decades, however, the civics curriculum has not only highlighted the teaching of socialist ideology but has also given greater attention to worldviews that include existential questions, such as those regarding the purpose of life (Lee et al., 2021).

Since the 1980s, Chinese educators have emphasised the importance of life when reflecting critically on a fundamental aim of education that in modern times has been overshadowed by moral-political schooling (e.g., Lau, 2014; Lee et al., 2021). For example, Lu and Gao (2004, p. 498), two prominent Chinese moral education researchers, argued that ‘students learn morality not for the sake of morality itself, but in order to enjoy a happy life’. Therefore, morality should serve life; life should not serve morality. Questions related to spiritual well-being, such as ‘What sort of life do I want to lead? What sort of person do I want to be? What are my values and my priorities?’ (Fisher, 2000, p. 50), were fresh and appealing in China’s post-Mao society, which increasingly embraced economic liberty and individualism and was anxious to explore the meaning of life (Lee & Ho, 2005; Xu, 2002). The rise of concern over human agency in seeking life’s meaning in education raises the following questions: How do modern Chinese civics textbooks interpret the meaning of life, and what changes have been made in the curriculum discourse on worldview construction as society has transformed? To answer these questions, we refer to Phillips' (2002, 2006, 2014) approach of ‘periodisation’ to examine and compare the transition processes across historical periods in China.

‘Periodisation’ in China’s modern history: Methodological approach

Two hundred and ten volumes of civics textbooks at the primary and secondary levels were collected for this study. The earliest, published in 1902, shows the Chinese political and intellectual elites’ initial attempt to develop a civics textbook for a new educational system (Zarrow, 2015). The most recent is the edition published by the Xi administration and used nationwide in contemporary China. The textbooks were published by the most influential publishers of their time, such as the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) of the ROC period and the People’s Education Press (Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe) under the PRC. Various textbook titles were used across the various periods, such as Civics; Moral Character and Life; Moral Character and Society; Politics and A History of Social Development.

We delineated four historical periods in our analysis of the textbook narratives, as they represent the ‘turning points’ (Grever & Van der Vlies, 2017, p. 295) in the construction of the national stories that they contain. According to Grever and Van der Vlies (2017, p. 287), ‘national narratives’ are ‘stories about a nation’s origin and achievements, and the perceived characteristics of a national community, produced to make sense of past events and to create cohesion in the present with a view to the future’. The periodisation framework is subjective to some extent, but being based on ‘the identification of significant events’, this comparative approach to educational enquiry can be used to identify ‘unities’ in the continuum of history (Phillips, 2002, p. 364, italics in the original). The four periods compared in our analysis of national narratives are as follows.

• The first period is the late Qing and Republican era (1902–1948). In 1902, China’s imperial rulers issued policy directives that aimed to establish a modern schooling system inspired by Japan’s educational reform (Zarrow, 2015). Together with other modern subjects such as sciences, agriculture, and medicine, civics was introduced into China to gradually replace the learning of traditional Confucian classics over the following decades. This period includes the last years of the Qing regime and various Republican governments (including Yuan Shikai, the Beiyang governments, and the Nationalist government that followed), all of which endeavoured to modernise the state and society and to develop modern education (Strauss, 1997). Unlike the socialist regime in the post-1949 period, the ideologies of this period were heterogeneous and included imperial monarchy, Western-style constitutional democracy, a form of liberalism imported first from Japan and then directly from the West, a cultural conservatism in defence of China’s traditions and nationalism, and Soviet-inspired revolutionary indoctrination (Fung, 2010; Strauss, 1997).

• The second period is the Maoist era, between 1949 and 1980. The socialist government under Mao Zedong was proactively committed to ‘radical and romantic communism’ (Tse, 2011, p. 164). In the early 1950s, all of the educational institutions were nationalised, and the design and publication of school textbooks were tightly controlled and monitored by the central government. The civics curriculum, which in this period was dominated by the teaching of Marxism, Communism, and other ideologies, was mandatory in the PRC’s school system. These ideologies are present in the curriculum to this day but have undergone various interpretations by post-Mao administrations. China went through the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, when the school system collapsed. The development and production of school textbooks also stopped, and instead, Chinese students were urged to learn Mao Zedong Thought. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, the radical social changes gave way to economic reform and opening up to the world. The reason we used 1981 as the ‘turning point’ for the third period is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a Central Committee conference that year in which the authorities publicly acknowledged the termination of the radical revolutionary policies of the Maoist era and set out a clear path for the reform of China (Xia, 2014). That conference significantly influenced the PRC’s ideologies and had a profound effect on reforms to the school curriculum in the following decades.

• The third period, from 1981 to 2011, covers several administrations, all of which were deeply influenced by Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatism (Tse, 2011). During this time, China embraced marketisation, economic liberalisation and globalisation, and a culture of individualism that was also growing in society at large (Lee & Ho, 2005). The civics curriculum in this period presented new interpretations of socialist ideologies supporting socio-economic reforms, and it incorporated moral education, political and citizenship education, and information about psychological well-being (Kennedy et al., 2014; Lee, 2010; Lee & Ho, 2005, 2008; Tse, 2011).

• The final period for this study is the Xi Jinping administration. During this period, the central authorities have sought to consolidate the party-state’s power and enhance nationalist ideologies (Brown & Bērziņa-Čerenkova, 2018). In contrast to previous administrations, the Xi era has highlighted China’s cultural particularism, and it claims to explore a unique model of modernisation through the blending of socialist ideology from the Maoist era and nationalism and economic liberalism from the Deng Xiaoping era (Chong et al., 2018). The Xi administration has reformed the civics curriculum and has mandated the learning of Xi Jinping Thought for all Chinese students (Chen, 2023).

The textbooks were analysed in the following two stages. Initially, a content analysis technique was used to select the text segments depicting life (shengming) in the curriculum narratives. Table 1 presents the number of textbooks collected in each period and the distribution of the 814 text segments selected across the four periods. It is worth noting that in the first period, two volumes were published before the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, and four text segments were retrieved from them. In the PRC, there are more volumes in the third period, and consequently, more items were retrieved. The Deng Xiaoping era lasted for around three decades and, more importantly, the three administrations during that period launched several educational reforms, resulting in more school textbooks being produced. In the second stage, strategies from critical discourse studies (Macgilchrist, 2017) were adopted to develop codes and discover patterns in the construction of the curricula and their interpretations of life. Critical discourse strategies helped us to decipher the meanings of life encoded in the textbooks’ discourse and bring out the worldview that the curriculum presents to students (Weninger, 2018).

Table 1. Number of school textbooks and selected text segments on life in the four periods.

	No. of volumes (%)	No. of text segments (%)
Late Qing and Republican era (1902–1948)	29 (14%)	90 (11%)
Maoist era (1949–1980)	23 (11%)	95 (12%)
Deng Xiaoping era (1981–2011)	114 (54%)	432 (53%)
Xi Jinping era (2012–2020)	44 (21%)	197 (24%)
Total	210 (100%)	814 (100%)

In the following, we present life as perceived through four distinct views: citizens’ socio-political participation, the ecological view of life, the Marxist view of life and imagined views of ‘life’ in terms of political constructs such as the country, the political party and ideologies. We further elucidate the meanings of the four views in the next section and then focus on the first as the primary context for interpreting the meaning of life for individual citizens. We coded 814 text segments and calculated the frequency with which they appeared in textbooks to determine trends and changes in curriculum narratives across four historical periods. We then invited two Chinese researchers to recode the text segments separately based on our coding categories. A coding agreement was calculated using Fleiss’ multi-rater kappa (kappa = .78). The result showed substantial overall agreement between our original coding and that of the two additional coders. In the next section, we discuss the definitions of the coding categories and the data. The extracts displayed are English translations of the original Chinese texts, with the year of publication, the titles, and the sections from which the extracts were retrieved also provided.

Findings

Views of life

The four views narrating life as contained in the total of 814 text segments used in this study are mapped out in this section. Figure 1 shows the percentages of text segments related to each of the four views in each historical period. The first view depicts citizens’ socio-political participation, which constituted the majority of the curricular narrative of life (ranging between 54% and 69% of the relevant text segments). The second is an ecological view of life, which concerns life in the natural environment. This view took a very tiny share (no more than 4%) in the first, second, and third periods and gained a greater share (reaching 11%) only in the current Xi era. The third view is a Marxist view of life, which only appeared in the socialist regime of the PRC. This view was widely represented in the Maoist era (35%) and has gradually declined since then. The final view is an imagination of ‘life’ for political constructs, which was present throughout the four periods and occupied between 12% and 29% in each period.

Figure 1. Distribution of four views narrating life in the curricular narratives of the four periods.

The first view, depicting citizens’ social-political participation, included narratives on life as a right for citizens; individuals’ relationship with the family, society, government, and the world; and the cultivation of moral and civic values. We found that the associated curriculum tended to portray scenarios representing life as being vulnerable and powerless, with incidents including death, sickness, and hunger as well as various challenges, such as wars, crimes, and natural disasters. Such a narrative shows the need for the state and its role in protecting the citizen’s life. This was an extremely common theme in the curriculum narratives throughout the four periods. For example,

Extract 1. Nowadays, everyone loves the country, so that it can grow strong and not be invaded by others. As an individual, I also feel proud. Otherwise, our lives and prosperity cannot be safeguarded. (1926–1929, New Junior Middle School Civics Textbook, Unit 1.3: Civic Morality and Practice)

As shown above, the teaching unit aimed to foster students’ national awareness and legitimise the role of the nation-state. As this first view was the primary view for decoding the meaning of life for individuals undertaking their roles as citizens, we analyse it further in the next section.

Second, the ecological view of life constituted a very tiny share of the information retrieved in the study. As shown in Figure 1, it accounted for only 2% in the late Qing and Republican era, zero in the Maoist era, and 4% in the Deng era. The Xi era, however, witnessed a significant increase (11%). Two factors may account for this change. The first and most important reason is the prominent role of the environment in Xi’s ideologies, which did not feature in the previous administrations. The newly published curriculum made a clear effort to promote students’ awareness of the natural environment (Chinese State Ministry of Education, 2019). The second factor is the increasing attention paid to human—nature relationships by educators in fashioning worldviews that extend beyond human life and show more concern about non-human life in recent decades (Gao et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2021).

The third view of life that we identified was based primarily on Marxist terminology and its narratives on life, including dialectical materialism and scientific socialism. Two scenarios emerged regarding this view. First, the interpretations of life, construed broadly as the living organism, were placed in the framework of Marxist historical materialism to illustrate a broad social and environmental development process. For example,

Extract 2. Life is a process of movement full of contradictions. … Starting from birth, life contains the contradiction between birth and death. When the contradiction is ended, one’s life is also terminated. (1978, Common Sense of High School Dialectical Materialism, Unit 5: The Universality and Particularity of Contradiction)

The purpose of this narrative was to develop students’ understanding of Marxist terminology and theory, which played a limited role in helping the students develop their understanding of the meaning of life. The second scenario of the Marxist perspective on life involved depicting social inequality and people’s suffering in primitive, slavery, feudal, and capitalist societies, the initial four stages of Marx’s social development trajectory. This made for a vivid contrast to current socialist society in which people could live longer, be healthier, and better enjoy life. For example,

Extract 3. The rule of the Western Jin Dynasty (265–316 AD) was corrupt. The wealthy, powerful families not only enjoyed extremely luxurious lives but also placed little value on human life, often killing people for entertainment. (1990, A Brief History of Social Development at Secondary School, Volume 1, Unit 10: Landlord Class Rule over Peasants and Peasant Revolts)

This description of the ruling class’s depriving their subjects of their lives illustrated the Marxist theory on class conflict and built legitimacy for the success of the Chinese socialist revolution.

The last view, envisaging life as a political construct, began early in the late Qing era, permeated the ROC, and continued into the PRC period. The primary purpose of this discursive strategy was to orientate students to imagine the life of these political constructs and understand their importance. For example,

Extract 4. If the political system and economic organisation cannot meet the needs of the times, the life of the nation will be endangered. … (1935, Junior Secondary Civics Textbooks in the Revival Era, Volume 2, Unit 10: Citizens and Government)

We identified two categories of political constructs. The first was the life of the nation-state and society, and the second targeted the political party and ideologies. As shown in Figure 2, the textbooks in the late Qing and Republican period focused on the first category only; the Maoist textbooks concentrated only on the second category. During the Deng and Xi eras, both categories were practised, with an emphasis on the second. This finding clearly suggested a nationalist orientation in modern China’s textbooks, while the PRC has placed greater emphasis on students’ understanding of the CCP and the ideologies with the characteristics of Chinese socialism.

Figure 2. Imagining political constructs as having a life in the four periods.

The meaning of life

In this section, we mainly focus on the first view and explore how the meaning of life is interpreted in curriculum narratives while depicting individual citizens’ socio-political participation. Although a few of the text segments do not convey explicit meanings about life, we find two competing discourses in the narratives of the first view: encouraging the spirit of self-sacrifice or self-dedication to various degrees and interpreting life as a right. Figure 3 shows the percentages of these two discourses in the first view across the four periods. Although both discourses can be found in the four periods, the two discourses tended to be in balance in the first period, whereas in the PRC, the tendency to promote individual citizens’ self-sacrifice or self-dedication was much more pronounced, especially in the eras before the Xi administration.

Figure 3. Interpreting the meaning of life in depictions of citizens’ socio-political participation.

In the discourse of self-sacrifice/self-dedication, the curriculum encouraged students to dedicate or even sacrifice their lives either to advance the interests of the nation-state and the political revolution or to realise certain ideals. These included moral and civic ideals (e.g., a person’s conscience, benevolence, justice, and integrity as well as helping others), scientific truth (e.g., scientists dedicate their lives to scientific discovery), and personal success (e.g., career advancement). The discourse of self-sacrifice/self-dedication presented in the textbooks published in the early Republican period can be traced back to the traditional Chinese understanding of life. For example, the textbook published in 1923 had a unit titled ‘Sacrifice’ in a section on social morality. In introducing the idea of sacrifice, the textbook quoted Buddhism and Mencius to explain the need to develop the spirit of self-sacrifice for the public good. This textbook also offered the Mozi (c. 470–c. 391 BCE) quote, ‘If killing oneself might preserve the world, it is right to kill oneself to benefit the world’,¹ to illustrate that it is morally right or noble for individuals to sacrifice their lives for the country or for justice. Through contrasting the physical and spiritual beings of life, the pre-PRC textbooks narrated that spiritual commitment (which closely relates to political, moral, and civic ideals) was more important than the physical being of life. To live a meaningful life, the individual should practise self-sacrifice and self-dedication to achieve spiritual well-being. The PRC textbooks continued to follow the line of thinking that life in the physical sense must be enriched by spirituality, as shown in Extract 5. In spite of shifts in political regimes, this outlook on life has remained unchanged.

Extract 5. We should become a morally noble person, someone who can contribute to society. We should cultivate our self-esteem and self-confidence to achieve that goal. It is vital to allow that goal to nourish our life. (1988, Ideology and Politics, Unit 1: Cultivating Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence)

As shown above, the textbook reiterated the importance of morality and the need for spiritual pursuits (the development of morality, contribution to society, and the cultivation of self-esteem) to nurture a person’s life.

The second discourse on the interpretation of life as a citizen’s right appeared first in the 1902 textbook but witnessed ups and downs over the four periods. The pre-PRC tended to highlight this narrative more than the PRC. In the Maoist era, it was little mentioned; the references gradually increased in the Deng and Xi eras. Since the Deng era, a phenomenon associated with the discourse of life as a right has emerged: the curriculum has encouraged students to cherish and enjoy life, a vivid contrast with the earlier discourse of self-sacrifice/self-dedication. Figure 3 also presents the percentages of this narrative in the textbooks. In our dataset, the first independent unit on cherishing life appeared around 1999, whereas the latest edition, published in 2018, contained many more items about the meaning of life. There were three units in this volume, titled ‘Exploring life’, ‘Cherishing life’, and ‘Enjoying life’. During this period, the narratives moved from concern about students’ physical health and safety to a more sophisticated philosophy of life. Extract 6 is an example of this understanding in the curriculum.

Extract 6. When we are in awe of life, we value it. Our lives are precious, and everyone’s life is more important than money, power, etc. The value of life is above all these external things. … Life is strong and powerful, also noble, and sacred. We must have a sense of reverence for life. … Albert Schweitzer said, ‘[the fundamental principle of morality is] that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil’² … Our reverence for life is not a command from someone, but a voluntary choice made by the heart. (2018, Morality and Law, Unit 8: Exploring Life)

This extract quotes Albert Schweitzer’s idea of a reverence for life and presents life as being strong, powerful, and sacred. This represents a new outlook on life for Chinese students, one that did not appear in the first three periods. It is interesting to observe that the Xi administration has mixed the discourses of self-sacrifice/self-dedication and life as a right, whereas the textbooks indicated a strong tendency to direct students to cherish and enjoy life. Furthermore, since the two previous administrations of the PRC, a change has occurred in the discourse of self-sacrifice/self-dedication such that individuals tend to be less encouraged to sacrifice life for the nation-state and revolution and instead dedicate themselves more to achieving ideals. This observation sheds light on the changes to citizenship values in Xi’s educational policies, which are to some extent influenced by Western thought but also bear the Maoist-era CCP’s legacy (Chen, 2023; Chong et al., 2018).

Discussions and conclusion

The findings of this study showed the changes in the civics textbooks’ discourse on interpreting the meaning of life that occurred as the ideal of citizenship and citizenship education took root and drove the modernisation of Chinese society. The periodisation approach to analysis revealed that in China’s societal transitions, the curriculum narrative on worldview construction changed. The ecological view attracted increasing attention over the course of the four periods. There was also a rise in the curriculum narratives on cherishing and enjoying life, which highlighted individual freedom and echoed the discourse of life as a right. This individualistic view of life, which gradually became popular in the Deng era (Tse, 2011), offers a striking contrast with the long-standing discourse of self-sacrifice and self-dedication. In the early twentieth century, when the ideas of citizenship first appeared in China, intellectuals attempted to articulate the worldview of ‘self-fulfilment’ and ‘self-happiness’, which was suppressed and devalued by traditional patriarchal cultures (Guo, 2014). One century later, Chinese society experienced ‘a rise of individualism and the weakening of collectivism’ with the launch of the market economy reforms, and young people were ready for happiness in their philosophies of life (Lee & Ho, 2008, p. 142). Despite the party-state’s consolidation of control in the field of education and in society at large in the Xi era, the curriculum has shown an interesting political struggle over the search for the meaning of life, and resistance in favour of alternative worldviews has intensified.

The research findings suggested the imperative of a humanist perspective to enrich state-led citizenship education through guiding students to critically reflect upon their own traditions and develop an open worldview based on the citizenship ideals of individual liberty, equality, and rationality (Halstead & Pike, 2006; Nussbaum, 2018). Nussbaum (2018) reminded us to critically reflect upon ourselves and our own traditions, while learning to understand and appreciate different worldviews, to respect all of humanity.

The study’s findings indicate that civics curriculum developers must critically examine the roles of traditional moral education in ‘empowering humanity’ (Veugelers, 2007, p. 110) in the development of citizenship education, particularly in non-democratic settings. Throughout the four periods, the Chinese civics textbooks urged student citizens to sacrifice or dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits closely related to the nation-state, political revolutions, and ideals. The Republican textbooks traced the origin of the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-devotion to traditional Chinese cultures and borrowed China’s traditional morality to highlight that worldview. Traditional morality in China, primarily grounded in Confucian values, highly emphasises human responsibility (Yao, 1999) and propels individuals to ‘search for a spiritual meaning in public life’ (Hang, 2011, p. 443). As argued by researchers such as Hang (2011) and Ke (2016), although Confucianism potentially has value in developing the humanistic meaning of life, it must be re-envisioned in modern society to avoid its manipulation as a means of social control and subordination. For example, the post-1949 socialist regime manipulated this tradition and fused it with its political agendas to ‘advocate a single, state-selected worldview’ (Ebels-Duggan, 2013, p. 42). Our research findings illustrate that for a transitional society such as in China, the primary challenge is not to determine whether moral education adequately engages with the political and seeks to synthesise citizenship and moral education, as argued by Althof and Berkowitz (2006) and Peterson (2020), but to more critically examine traditional moral education and state power in terms of tolerating different value systems in a society and nurturing rational, autonomous citizens.

By advancing a humanist perspective, the civics curriculum plays a more active role in developing students’ ability to find life’s meanings when encountering cultural and ideological complexity and to appreciate alternative worldviews in the praxis of their citizen roles (Fisher, 2000; Nussbaum, 2018, Schinkel et al., 2016; Veugelers, 2007, 2011, 2020). The four periods examined in this study shared a similarity, namely that the curriculum narratives provided limited space for students to develop agency and negotiate their own worldviews. Despite representing life as a right, the curricula prescribed a meaning of life that fostered a spirit of self-sacrifice and self-devotion for the good of the nation-state, revolutions, and other ideals. A comparison of the pre-PRC and PRC indicated that under the socialist regime, the interpretation of life tended to be more politically and ideologically framed. This is evident in an imagination of ‘life’ for the CCP and its ideologies, a discourse on citizens’ dedicating their lives to political ideals, the under-representation of life as a right, and the adoption of a Marxist view of life in the curriculum narratives. An exploration of views of the meaning of life is a crucial topic for a society in transition, as it offers a lens through which to examine how state power is exercised and whether citizens are respected as reasonable individuals (Ebels-Duggan, 2013). Veugelers (2011, p. 19) argued that the topic of giving meaning to life should be reintroduced in the school curriculum to develop students’ competency in addressing ‘the tension between autonomy and social concern’ in citizenship development. Although that topic has been incorporated into the Chinese civics subject throughout the development of modern schooling systems, an interpretation of the meaning of life entails a tension between a rising concern for individual autonomy and the discourse of ‘social concern’, primarily defined by the state/political party power. Future studies could explore the teaching of worldviews in school and Chinese students’ perceptions about the meaning of life. Furthermore, given the socio-cultural complexity of constructing a meaningful life (Balthip et al., 2017; Crossley, 2008; Kawai & Moran, 2017), a cross-cultural analysis of civics curricula presents a potential means of preparing citizens to learn diverse worldviews in a globalised world.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments during the revision process. We also thank Professor Kerry J. Kennedy for his valuable suggestions. Thanks also go to AsiaEdit staff for proofreading the final version. The views presented in this paper are personal only and do not necessarily represent those of the Education University of Hong Kong and UNESCO, and do not commit the respective organizations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. EdUHK 18603820).

Notes on contributors

Zhenzhou Zhao

Zhenzhou Zhao is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, PRC.

John Chi-Kin Lee

John Chi-Kin Lee is the Chair Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of Centre for Religious and Spirituality Education, the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, PRC.

Notes

1. The English translation is retrieved from Johnston (2009), p. 581.

2. The English translation is retrieved from Schweitzer (1949), p. xviii.