Who the Future Citizens Should Be: The Conceptualization of Globalization in China

• In Event: 44.029 - Making Up People: Futurities, Fear, and Hope

Abstract

“Globalization” is not a local notion in Chinese culture. It was first introduced in China through economic agreements and partnerships, especially in the 1990s, following China’s entry into the APEC and WTO. Globalization did not proliferate in education discourses until 2000. It was often described as a way to react to economic transformations, and retained this residue in the goals such as “to educate talents for global competition”. While much research in education has already looked at globalization in China, most address questions such as, “what is globalization in education?” or, “how should education be done in order to deal with globalization?” Little research has attempted to rethink this still-recent uptake of globalization in the Chinese context. This paper specifically looks at research from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (a research clearinghouse), Chinese government documents, and national curricula from the past fifteen years in order to describe and reflect on how globalization discourse is deployed in education. In the analysis, I ask two questions: 1.) how is globalization positioned as both challenge and opportunity in education? 2.) What kind of person is a “global citizen,” and how does globalization discourse participate in this making up of a kind of person (Hacking, 1986)?

To look at how the idea “globalization” was constructed and used in Chinese education, this article specifically explores three “kinds” of related discourses in China. First, in academic discourses, I study globalization’s links to the reconstruction of political power and culture, and of China’s place in world history. Second, I examine the Chinese government’s educational policy about globalization to “open to the world” to China and its links to economic aims. Third, I study Chinese textbooks’ explanations of globalization in elementary schools and middle schools in terms of how they make up “global citizens” and how students learn to think about themselves in this way.

In my analysis of these related globalization discourses in China, I suggest two “kinds” of citizens are put forward and contrasted: one is a national citizen within a world of global competitiveness who merely “endures the processes of globalization.” The other is a global citizen who transcends national boundaries. This kind of citizen not only manages globalization, but also has “global awareness” and “human care,” and is “willing to act positively for world peace, human development, global equity, justice and sustainable development.” (JianJun Feng, 2014). I argue that those these two discourses of the citizen appear distinct, the same categorical logic operates to define who the future citizen in China should be by making comparing the global (Chinese) citizen as superior to the national. In this way, the “global citizen” in China reinscribes a narrative of national exceptionalism.

Author

• Xue Yin, The University of Wisconsin-Madison