Reframing citizenship education in Beijing: competing views and strategies

Abstract

This narrative documentary study depicts two approaches of citizenship education (CE) in Beijing over the past decade—change through curriculum development, versus change through the international exchange of ideals and practices. It reveals the varied interests of CE designers and the tensions arising from competing approaches to CE. Analysis unfolds three dimensions of CE in Beijing, i.e. CE as a civic mission advocated by Chinese scholars, as a diplomatic platform for local government to showcase the city’s image building, and as an authoritarian agent serving to resist notions and terminologies associated with the state’s political enemies. Reframing the citizenship discourses into these three dimensions allows us to order, conceptually, how we approach the function of CE in Beijing. The case of Beijing illuminates the methods, tensions, and likely future directions of CE in other Chinese polities, such as Hong Kong.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• citizenship education
• diplomacy
• authoritarian
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Su-Yan Pan is an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests and publications seek to explore scholarship in the fields of citizenship education, higher education, educational politics and legislations, international academic relations, and China studies.

Acknowledgements

This article draws upon findings from two research projects—‘Higher Education, Citizenship, and Academic Values Across Cultures: Experience from Hong Kong and Beijing’ (Ref. No: R9301_HSSPFS-HKIEd-802-HSS-13), and ‘Rethinking Higher Education and Citizenship in a Global Age: Students’ Experience in Hong Kong’ (Ref.: GRF 844311); both are generously funded by the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee of Hong Kong. The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and advice on refining earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. The 1997 handover changed Hong Kong’s political status from that of a dependent UK polity, to a Chinese Special Administrative Region administered under the PRC’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle, which promises Hong Kong’s capitalist system and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years, despite the PRC’s socialist nature.