Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:22:06.192Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Being Chinese Means Becoming Cheap Labour”: Education, National Belonging and Social Positionality among Youth in Contemporary China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2020

Orna Naftali Open the ORCID record for Orna Naftali [Opens in a new window]
Orna Naftali*
Affiliation:
Department of Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the Chinese party-state has attempted to teach its youth how to think and speak about the nation through a “patriotic education” campaign waged in schools, the media and on public sites. The reception of these messages by youth of different social backgrounds remains a disputed issue, however. Drawing on a multi-sited field study conducted among rural and urban Han Chinese youth attending different types of schools, this article explores the effects of the patriotic education campaign on youth conceptions of the nation by examining the rhetoric high-school students employ when asked to reflect upon their nation. The study reveals that a majority of youth statements conform to the language and contents of the patriotic education campaign; however, there are significant differences in the discursive stances of urban youth and rural youth and of those attending academic and non-academic, vocational schools. These findings call into question the party-state's current vision of China as a “unified” national collectivity. They highlight the existence of variances in the sense of collective belonging and national identity of Chinese youth, while underscoring the importance of social positioning and perceived life chances in producing these variances.

摘要

摘要

自上世纪90年代以来，中国共产党一直试图通过在学校、媒体和公共场所开展的“爱国主义教育”活动，教育青少年如何思考和谈论国家。然而，不同社会背景的青年对这些信息的接受仍然是一个有争议的问题。本文对来自不同地域和在不同类型学校就读的城乡汉族青年进行了实地调研，通过考察中学生对国家概念的反思，探讨了 “爱国主义教育” 运动对青年观念的影响。研究表明，大多数青年言论符合 “爱国主义教育” 运动的语言和内容。然而，城市和农村青年以及学术和非学术职业学校学生的态度存在显著差异。这些发现凸显了当代中国青年集体归属感和国家认同感的差异，同时强调了社会地位和所感知的生活机会在产生这些差异方面的重要性。他们进一步质疑党国目前对中国作为 “统一” 的国家集体的看法。

Keywords

nationalismpatriotic educationschoolingsocial positioningvocational educationpolitical discourseChina中国爱国主义教育民族认同感年轻人职业学校政治意识形态
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 245 , March 2021 , pp. 51 - 71
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Althusser, Louis. 1971. “Ideology and ideological state apparatuses, notes toward an investigation.” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (Brewster, Ben trans.). London: New Left Books, 123–130.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 2004. “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi).” Public Culture 16(2), 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 2008. “From ‘class’ to ‘social strata’: grasping the social totality in reform era China.” Third World Quarterly 29(3), 501–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy.” In Featherstone, Mike (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London: Sage, 295–310.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne. 1991. “The nation form: history and ideology.” In Balibar, Etienne and Wallerstein, Immanuel (eds.), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 86–106.Google Scholar
Barmé, Geremie R. 1995. “To screw foreigners is patriotic: China's avant-garde nationalists.” The China Journal 34, 209–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Martyn D. 2007. Children's Knowledge, Beliefs and Feelings about Nations and National Groups. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Benei, Véronique. 2011. “The predicament of embodied nationalisms and educational subjects.” In Levinson, Bradley A.U. and Pollock, Mica (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Education. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 265–278.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Abanti. 2019. “Chinese nationalism under Xi Jinping revisited.” India Quarterly 75(2), 245–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslin, Shaun, and Shen, Simon. 2010. “Online Chinese nationalism(s): comparisons and findings.” In Shen, Simon and Breslin, Shaun (eds.), Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 263–282.Google Scholar
Brown, Kerry, and Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Una Aleksandra. 2018. “Ideology in the era of Xi Jinping.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 23, 323–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, and Cooper, Frederick. 2000. “Beyond ‘identity’.” Theory & Society 29, 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2003. “‘Belonging’ in the cosmopolitan imaginary.” Ethnicities 3(4), 531–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2008. “Cosmopolitanism and nationalism.” Nations and Nationalism 14(3), 427–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callahan, William A. 2006. “History, identity, and security: producing and consuming nationalism in China.” Critical Asian Studies 38(2), 179–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callahan, William A. 2007. “Trauma and community: the visual politics of Chinese nationalism and Sino-Japanese relations.” Theory & Event 10(4), muse.jhu.edu/article/230142.Google Scholar
Callahan, William A. 2017. “Dreaming as a critical discourse of national belonging: China Dream, American Dream and world dream.” Nations and Nationalism 23(2), 248–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Rou-Lan. 2020. “Trends in economic inequality and its impact on Chinese nationalism.” Journal of Contemporary China 29(121), 75–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockain, Alex. 2012. Young Chinese in Urban China. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deans, Phil. 2005. “Nationalism and national self-assertion in the People's Republic of China: state patriotism versus popular nationalism?” The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 21, 45–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1995. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning the Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eley, Geoff, and Suny, Ronald Grigor. 1996. “Introduction: from the moment of social history to the work of cultural representation.” In Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald Grigor (eds.), Becoming National: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3–37.Google Scholar
Fairbrother, Gregory P. 2003. Toward Critical Patriotism: Students’ Resistance to Political Education in Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Falk, Richard. 2000. “The decline of citizenship in an era of globalization.” Citizenship Studies 4(1), 5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrer, James. 2014. “Foreigner street: urban citizenship in multicultural Shanghai.” In Kim, Nam-kook (ed.), Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia. London: Ashgate, 17–44.Google Scholar
Fong, Vanessa. 2004. “Filial nationalism among Chinese teenagers with global identities.” American Ethnologist 31(4), 631–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fong, Vanessa. 2007. “Morality, cosmopolitanism, or academic attainment? Discourses on ‘quality’ and urban Chinese-only-children's claims to ideal personhood.” City & Society 19(1), 86–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fong, Vanessa. 2011. Paradise Redefined: Transnational Chinese Students and the Quest for Flexible Citizenship in the Developed World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Jon E. 2017. “The edges of the nation: a research agenda for uncovering the taken-for-granted foundations of everyday nationhood.” Nations and Nationalism 23(1), 26–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gries, Peter Hays. 2004. China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Guang, Lei. 2005. “Realpolitik nationalism: international sources of Chinese nationalism.” Modern China 31(4), 487–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Ethnicity: identity and difference.” In Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald (eds.), Becoming National: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 337–349.Google Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf. 2002[1989]. “Notes on the global ecumene.” In Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Rosaldo, Renato (eds.), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden, MT: Blackwell, 37–45.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskov. 2013. “Learning individualism: Hesse, Confucius, and pep rallies in a Chinese rural high school.” The China Quarterly 213, 60–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskov. 2015. Educating the Chinese Individual: Life in a Rural Boarding School. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskov, and Woronov, T.E.. 2013. “Demanding and resisting vocational education: a comparative study of schools in rural and urban China.” Comparative Education 49(2), 242–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 1995. “Self-interest, group identity.” In Breton, Albert, Galeotti, Gianluigi, Salmon, Pierre and Wintrobe, Ronald (eds.), Nationalism and Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14–42.Google Scholar
He, Baogang, and Guo, Yingjie. 2000. Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Henningsen, Lena. 2012. “Individualism for the masses? Coffee consumption and the Chinese middle class’ search for authenticity.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13(3), 408–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2016[1997]. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, Leonie. 2001. “From social to political identity: a critical examination of social identity theory.” Political Psychology 22(1), 127–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Christopher R. 2006. Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacka, Tamara. 2009. “Cultivating citizens: suzhi (quality) discourse in the PRC.” Positions-East Asia Cultures Critique 17(3), 523–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Sam. 2006. The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Samuel S., and Dittmer, Lowell. 1993. “Whither China's quest for national identity?” In Dittmer, Lowell and Kim, Samuel S. (eds.), China's Quest for National Identity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 237–290.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2007. “Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(2), 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lan, Pei-chia. 2014. “Segmented incorporation: the second generation of rural migrants in Shanghai.” The China Quarterly 217, 243–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, W.W. 2007. “Globalisation, city development and citizenship education in China's Shanghai.” International Journal of Educational Development 27, 18–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Yi. 2011. “Turning rurality into modernity: suzhi education in a suburban public school of migrant children in Xiamen.” The China Quarterly 206, 313–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ling, Minhua. 2015. “‘Bad students go to vocational schools!’ Education, social reproduction and migrant youth in urban China.” The China Journal 73, 108–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ling, Minhua. 2017. “Returning to no home: educational remigration and displacement in rural China.” Anthropological Quarterly 90(3), 715–742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Fengshu. 2011. Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Fengshu. 2012. “‘Politically indifferent’ nationalists? Chinese youth negotiating political identity in the internet age.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15(1), 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathews, Gordon, Ma, Eric and Lui, Tai-Lok. 2008. Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2004. “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: ‘population quality’ discourse, demographic transition and primary education.” The China Quarterly 177, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naftali, Orna. 2018. “‘These war dramas are like cartoons’: education, media consumption, and Chinese youth attitudes towards Japan.” Journal of Contemporary China 27(113), 703–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyíri, Pál. 2009. “From Starbucks to Carrefour: consumer boycotts, nationalism and taste in contemporary China.” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 6(2), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyíri, Pál, and Zhang, Juan, with Varrall, Merriden. 2010. “China's cosmopolitan nationalists: ‘heroes’ and ‘traitors’ of the 2008 Olympics.” The China Journal 63(1), 25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pun, Ngai, and Koo, Anita. 2019. “Double contradiction of schooling: class reproduction and working-class agency at vocational schools in China.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 40(1), 50–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qian, Licheng, Xu, Bin and Chen, Dingding. 2017. “Does history education promote nationalism in China? A ‘limited effect’ explanation.” Journal of Contemporary China 26(104), 199–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramirez, Francisco O., and Boli, John. 1987. “The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization.” Sociology of Education 60(1), 2–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ren, Hai. 2013. The Middle Class in Neoliberal China: Governing Risk, Life-Building, and Themed Spaces. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 2004. “The victory of materialism: aspirations to join China's urban moneyed classes and the commercialization of education.” The China Journal 51(1), 27–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 2009. “Contemporary Chinese youth and the state.” The Journal of Asian Studies 68(2), 359–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schein, Louisa. 1999. “Of cargo and satellites: imagined cosmopolitanism.” Postcolonial Studies 2(3), 345–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2004. “‘What makes one an Israeli?’ Negotiating identities in everyday representations of ‘Israeliness’.” Nations and Nationalism 10(4), 479–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shayo, Moses. 2009. “A model of social identity with an application to political economy: nation, class and redistribution.” American Political Science Review 103(2), 147–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinkkonen, Elina. 2013. “Nationalism, patriotism and foreign policy attitudes among Chinese university students.” The China Quarterly 216, 1045–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, Christian P. 2017. Shaken Authority: China's Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun, Wanning. 2002. Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Tang, Hong. 2010. “Zhongguo dangdai ‘fenqing’ jiti de xinli tezheng ji wenti duice” (Contemporary Chinese “angry youth”: psychological characteristics and countermeasures). Huazhang (2010), 64–66.Google Scholar
Tang, Wenfang, and Darr, Benjamin. 2012. “Chinese nationalism and its political and social origins.” Journal of Contemporary China 21(77), 811–826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomba, Luigi. 2014. The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2001. “The anthropology of the state in the age of globalization: close encounters of the deceptive kind.” Current Anthropology 42(1), 125–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unger, Jonathan. 1996. “Introduction.” In Unger, Jonathan and Barmé, Geremie (eds.), Chinese Nationalism. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, xi-xviii.Google Scholar
Vickers, Edward. 2007. “Museums and nationalism in contemporary China.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education 37(3), 365–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickers, Edward. 2009. “The opportunity of China? Education, patriotic values and the Chinese state.” In Lall, Marie and Vickers, Edward (eds.), Education as a Political Tool in Asia. London: Routledge, 53–82.Google Scholar
Wallace, Jeremy L., and Weiss, Jessica Chen. 2015. “The political geography of nationalist protest in China: cities and the 2012 anti-Japanese protests.” The China Quarterly 22, 403–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Zheng. 2011. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Weiss, Hilde. 2003. “A cross-national comparison of nationalism in Austria, the Czech and Slovac Republics, Hungary, and Poland.” Political Psychology 24(2), 377–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Jessica Chen. 2014. Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China's Foreign Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Jessica Chen. 2019. “How hawkish is the Chinese public? Another look at ‘rising nationalism’ and Chinese foreign policy.” Journal of Contemporary China 28(119), 679–695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2007. “Performing the nation: China's children as little red pioneers.” Anthropological Quarterly 80(3), 647–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2009a. “Governing China's children: governmentality and ‘education for quality’.” Positions 17(3), 567–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2009b. “Migrant children and migrant schooling: policies, problems and possibilities.” In Murphy, Rachel (ed.), Labour Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China. New York: Routledge, 96–114.Google Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2011. “Learning to serve: urban youth, vocational schools and new class formations in China.” The China Journal 66, 76–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2016. Class Work: Vocational School and China's Urban Youth. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wu, Guoguang. 2008. “From post-imperial to late communist nationalism: historical change in Chinese nationalism from May Fourth to the 1990s.” Third World Quarterly 29(3), 467–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xiong, Yihan. 2015. “The broken ladder: why education provides no upward mobility for migrant children in China.” The China Quarterly 221, 161–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Wu. 2007. Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Yang, Lijun, and Zheng, Yongnian. 2012. “Fen qings (angry youth) in contemporary China.” Journal of Contemporary China 21(76), 637–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yi, Lin. 2008. Cultural Exclusion in China: State Education, Social Mobility and Culture Difference. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Li. 2010. In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yinxian, Liu, Jiajun and Wen, Ji-Rong. 2018. “Nationalism on Weibo: towards a multifaceted understanding of Chinese nationalism.” The China Quarterly 235, 758–783.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Dingxin. 2002. “An angle on nationalism in China today: attitudes among Beijing students after Belgrade 1999.” The China Quarterly 172, 885–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Suisheng. 2004. A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhao, Suisheng. 2013. “‘Foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism revisited: the strident turn.” Journal of Contemporary China 22(82), 535–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhou, Min, and Wang, Hanning. 2017. “Anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese university students: the influence of contemporary nationalist propaganda.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 46(1), 168–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhou, Yongming. 2005. “Informed nationalism: military websites in Chinese cyberspace.” Journal of Contemporary China 14(44), 543–562.Google Scholar