scholarly journals Poverty and Inequality in Rural Education: Evidence from China

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiayi Shi ◽  
Peter Sercombe
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Western China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
Small Rural Schools

In 1998, the People’s Republic of China implemented an education policy, the “School Consolidation Policy”, which entailed merging small rural schools with larger ones. It has had a massive effect on rural people across China, and as a result of it, over 60% of schools in outlying areas have closed. The policy’s implementation and effects have received little scholarly attention, despite its scale and consequences. This article investigates the policy, drawing on the nexus between critical discourse analysis and an ethnographical study conducted from 2007 to 2018. The article reviews trajectories and critical junctures shaping educational change in one rural community in north-western China, as an example of broader changes that have been occurring across the country. This is presented through four thematically interrelated episodes, over a 10-year period, illustrating the conception of the policy, its local interpretation and implementation, and its consequences as perceived by stakeholders. The recontextualisation of rural education is part of the policy, as expressed in political discourse, and is examined together with its wider impacts. Attention is paid to the local adoption of the policy at different levels of government and the challenges faced by villagers in rural China in their efforts to capitalise on educational opportunities and secure a measure of social mobility. Consequences of the policy’s implementation are analysed and include rising educational inequality, social marginalisation and a lack of social mobility prospects for families affected.

An introduction to the special issue on “Language, politics and media: The Hong Kong protests”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liu Ming ◽  
Guofeng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Protests and social movements have become part of Hong Kong’s local politics since the 1970s. However, protests against the proposed extradition bill in 2019‒20 turned out to be the most violent political mass movement in Hong Kong after its return to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. It not only drew wide international attention but also evoked another round of “news war” over Hong Kong (Lee et al. 2002). This special issue collects six articles which address the representations of the protests in Hong Kong by different parties on different media platforms. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, these studies examine discursive strategies employed in media representations of the protests and the ideologies and power struggles at play. It aims to present different perspectives towards the issue and shed light on the complex relations between language, media and politics in the representations of the Hong Kong protests.

Rural Education in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Du ◽  
Huimeng Li ◽  
Weijian Wang
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Rural Students ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Education In China

Rural education has received considerable attention from researchers and policy makers in their attempts to understand the deep-rooted rural/urban dichotomy in China. Most debates surround how to improve the “quality” of rural education and to “rebalance” the level of educational development between rural and urban regions. For this purpose raising the “quality” of teachers across rural schools is highlighted as the key element in many policies and studies, and the focus has shifted from addressing a teacher shortage to the recruitment and retention of quality teachers, especially in those remote regions. Issues in China’s rural education are not only reflections of rural–urban differences but also reproduce these social differentiations. Those who pay the price of the entrenched rural/urban dichotomy in China are the increasing number of “left-behind” children in the rural villages as well as the “floating” students in the urban schools whose numbers have also increased in the past decades. Most members of both groups tend to undergo a social reproduction process in the school systems and eventually become workers in the manufacturing and service industries in urban centers. Meanwhile, rural education in China is also abundant in culturally meaningful processes. While many scholars and policy makers view the rural school as a critical site for passing on the cultural inheritance of “rural China,” rural students themselves nevertheless creatively make meaning of their daily experiences and produce rich cultural forms. Some of them develop certain forms of “counterschool” culture as they experience educational failure, while others take up cultural traits valued by their rural families and turn them into a form of cultural capital, which consequently plays a pivotal role in the educational and social mobility of rural students.

Dealing with Responsibility for the Great Leap Famine in the People's Republic of China

2010 ◽  
Vol 201 ◽  
pp. 176-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Wemheuer
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Official Evaluation ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractIn the aftermath of the famine in 1962, Mao Zedong took formal responsibility for the failure of the Great Leap Forward in the name of the central government. Thousands of local cadres were made scapegoats and were legally punished. This article focuses on the question of how the different levels of the Chinese state, such as the central government, the province and the county, have dealt with the question of responsibility for the famine. The official explanation for the failure of the Great Leap will be compared to unofficial memories of intellectuals, local cadres and villagers. The case study of Henan province shows that local cadres are highly dissatisfied with the official evaluation of responsibility. Villagers bring suffering, starvation and terror into the discourse, but these memories are constructed in a way to preserve village harmony. This article explains why these different discourses about responsibility of the famine are unlinked against the background of the “dual society”; the separation between urban and rural China. Finally, it will be shown that the Communist Party was unable to convince parts of society and the Party to accept the official interpretation.

scholarly journals Research on the Influence of Urban-rural Dual Structure on the Social Mobility Function of Rural Education — Based on the Empirical Investigation of the Loss of Rural Junior High School Students in S City, Hubei Province

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miao Li
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
School Students ◽  
Dual Structure ◽  
Mobility Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Rural

Based on the empirical investigation of the loss of rural junior high school students in S City, Hubei Province, this article explores the weakening of the social mobility function of rural education under the dual structure of urban and rural areas, and points out the deep-seated reasons — the urban-centric orientation of the national education system under the dual urban-rural structure. At the same time, the article reveals the harm of the weakening of the social mobility function of rural education under the urban-rural dual structure.

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