What does the ideal citizen look like in China’s new era? A bottom-up view

ABSTRACT

China has reformed the way it nurtures a generation of citizens for the new era of the Xi administration. School curricula have been reformed and more teachers have been trained to deliver political – ideological education. While the central authorities play a crucial role in forging a vision of the ‘ideal’ citizen from the top down, the enactment of centrally promulgated policies and curricula is complicated. This study explores a bottom-up view from the perspective of a group of university teachers, the institutional actors who socialise young people into ‘ideal’ citizens on the ground. Four themes emerge in the informants’ narratives: ideological commitment, abilities, developing a global outlook, and the influence of traditional culture. The paper concludes with a discussion of the interplay between socialist, traditional, and neoliberal rationalities in the making of Chinese citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• education
• ideology
• discourse
• Chinese culture

Acknowledgments

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). The author is grateful to Dr. Huaxin Yang for her assistance in the data collection and all the informants who took part in the study.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. At that time, the term ‘New People’ was spelled out in full as ‘Four-Haves New People’. ‘Four Haves’ (siyou) refers to having the ideal of achieving socialist modernisation and having moral integrity, educational experience, and discipline. According to Shi (2019), having discipline means being able to recognise and resist the West’s erroneous ideas and adhering to the four principles proposed by Deng Xiaoping in 1970 (adherence to Socialism, adherence to the dictatorship of the proletariat, adherence to the CCP’s leadership, and adherence to Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [EdUHK 18603820].