Educating for social justice in contemporary China: the politics of justice and injustice

ABSTRACT

Corresponding to the party-state’s expressed ambition to build a just society, Chinese citizenship education involves educating students for social justice. This paper critically examines the discursive subject of social justice in official citizenship education by analyzing school textbooks and interviewing schoolteachers. It sheds light on the discursive construction of social justice primarily through narratives of justice rather than injustice. Drawing upon the notion that injustice is distinct from and has priority over justice in moral and political philosophy and social theory, this paper argues that the positive discursive construction of social justice enables the party-state to manipulate social consensus and manufacture depoliticized, individualized and authoritarian citizenship. Seeing the lack of opportunity to teach and learn social injustice as epistemic injustice in itself, the paper suggests that education for social justice should be oriented as education against social injustice in China and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship education
• social justice
• social injustice
• priority
• politics
• official discourse
• contemporary China

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the schoolteacher interviewees for their time and participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 After its formal debut as part of the well-propagandized political doctrine ‘socialist harmonious society’ in the 16th CCP Central Committee’s Decision on Major Issues Concerning Building a Socialist Harmonious Society in 2006, the phrase appeared in the following 17th (2007), 18th (2012), and the latest 19th (2017) CCP National Congress Reports and in the 18th CCP Central Committee’s Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms in 2013, an overarching document setting out wide-ranging reform objectives to be achieved by 2020.

2 See, for instance, the speech that Xi gave on an inspection tour to Guangdong province in 2012 and is available at http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0902/c40531-25586798.html (Accessed 19 April 2020)

3 In his influential speech at the national meeting with teachers of ideopolitical and moral education in 2019, Xi reiterated the aim of the education is to train ‘socialist builders and successors’ for ‘national rejuvenation’ through ‘student-centered’ approaches. The speech text (in Chinese) is available at http://jhsjk.people.cn/article/31843368 (Accessed 16 December 2020)

4 ‘Authoritarian citizenship’ would be an oxymoron if liberty and democracy are considered inherent in the concept of citizenship, but not necessarily so if citizenship is simply understood as value-neutral relationship between individuals and the state. See Distelhorst and Fu (2019).

5 For instance, the Ministry of Education issued an instructional policy in 2009 to facilitate student volunteering activities. The policy (in Chinese) is available at http://old.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s253/201001/76209.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [grant number 19K14096].