Understanding Chinese national vocational education reform: a critical policy analysis

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s post-structural analytical approach, this study examines the nature of recent policy reforms in China in relation to vocational education (VE). The article reveals key problem representations that characterise the Implementation Plan of National Vocational Education Reform (IPNVER) issued by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2019, and how these have arisen in light of previous reforms. These previous reforms relate to China’s policies, laws and regulations with respect to the higher vocational education system since the ‘opening up’ in 1978. The study reveals that the VE policy in China is strongly governed by ‘economic logics’ in the context of neoliberal globalisation, even as it exhibits various ‘Chinese characteristics’, and that developing VE is seen as a solution to promoting Chinese economic and social development. However, at the same time, important issues are also ‘silenced’ as a result of the dominance of more economic logics in national VE policy. The article suggests policymakers need to pay more attention to developments in regional education, the social welfare issues of poorer working urban and rural peoples, and the mental health of citizens, while developing the national economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese vocational education
• WPR approach
• Bacchi
• education policy analysis
• Chinese characteristics

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. In the Chinese context, the term ‘training’ has deficit overtones; consequently, the acronym VE is used as opposed to VET.

2. This refers to how those areas that first became prosperous (‘first rich’) would help generate wealth in nearby areas (‘rich’), leading to everyone in the country eventually becoming ‘rich together’.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.