China’s School Textbook Replacement and Curriculum Reform in the New Era of Globalization

ABSTRACT

This article constitutes the first attempt to analyze the driving force of the nationwide replacement of previous local editions of textbooks with the new edition (MOE authoritative edition) in China. This large-scale replacement of school textbooks began in 2017 and was completed in 2019, accompanied by the establishment of the National Textbook Committee in 2017. The article attempts to analyze the rationale of the textbook replacement in the context of its development history, and it argues that the reform can partly be regarded as a corrective measure taken to adjust the inculcation of national identity, patriotism and citizenship and to shape correct world views and values in students in a new era of globalization. In the end, the article places the new edition of textbook in the context of the Hong Kong riot 2019, and argues that the educational policy in Hong Kong, especially its loosening of ideological control over its textbooks, has to be partially responsible for the riot, therefore attesting to the need of the large-scale school textbook replacement in mainland China.

KEYWORDS:

• School textbook
• curriculum reform
• curricular standards
• Hong Kong riot

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

4 Hanyu Pinyin (also commonly shortened as Pinyin), “is the official Romanization system for Standard Chinese promulgated by the Chinese government in 1958. Pinyin literally means ‘spell the sound’ and was designed as an aid for character learning.” (Lü 2017, 306)

1 A stark contrast is a lesson in the same unit where a Chinese child is depicted as having no sense of environmental protection through his acts of catching kingfisher fledgling, only to be stopped by an old fisherman. See Lesson 5 “Kingfisher” from Vol. 6 of Chinese subject textbook, People’s Education Press, 2002, Beijing.

2 Different from English, which uses alphabet to form words, the basic separate unit in Chinese with a distinctive meaning is a character, and a word may be formed by only one character, but most often by two characters.

3 The Chinese character “郎” has multiple meanings: to read out; sunny. However, “至” (to, or until) and “万” (ten thousand) have no connection with each other, nor with “郎”.

5 Since Hong Kong is a special administrative region adopting the “One Country, Two Systems,” its social institution, including curriculum and textbooks, are designed by itself and different from those used in the mainland.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Social Science Fund of China: [Grant Number 21&ZD257].