Citizenship Curriculum in China: A Shifting Discourse towards Chinese Democracy, Law Education and Psychological Health

According to the Director of the 21^st Century Education Development Research Academy in China, civic education is in its infancy in mainland China. The Director points out that “the term only surfaced in public in the past couple of years. It was very sensitive and couldn’t be talked about before” (Liu, 2005). However, Zhou Hongling, Director of the Beijing New Era Citizen Education Centre, argues that “for the transformation of China from a traditional autocratic society into a modern democratic nation instruction in civic education is a necessity.” Zhou further alleges that providing civic education, promoting “citizen action,” and eventually establishing a civil society could lead to a peaceful and gradual transition (cited in Liu, 2005, p.A6).

This chapter attempts to track the change of emphases in the citizenship curriculum in light of the changes in political, social and economic circumstances during this period. In this context we should note that the term “citizenship (or civic) education” is in general not used in the literature in China, or adopted in the official curriculum, as it has been perceived that the term is a Western political concept alleging democratic citizenship. The closest terms to citizenship education in China would include political education, ideological education and moral education. A Chinese dictionary of moral education suggests that the three terms are actually three-in-one in connotation, and can be used interchangeably (Liu, 1998, p.120). These concepts are so interrelated that they merge variably into ideopolitical education (sixiang zhengzhi jiaoyu) and ideomoral education (sixiang pinde jiaoyu). It is only in the past few years that the term civic education has surfaced in public (Liu, 2005, p.A6).