Chinese College Students' Imaginaries of China in "the New Era"

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: International Contexts and Issues in Postsecondary Education

Abstract

Generally, this paper examines how college students engage governmental policy in relation to their own belief systems and lived experiences as well as evidences used to make such interpretations. More specifically, this paper presents data from qualitative interviews with 73 college students in China regarding how they understand recent changes to their government’s stated doctrine based on the socio-historical contexts of their lives. As such, this paper addresses three key issues: 1) how students employ a “social imaginary” to intersect lived experiences, desire for future change, and learned civic/national history; 2) the social discourses students draw upon to lend evidence for their responses to governmental policy; 3) how political education informs a lived social imaginary among college-aged students in China.

Authors

• Xi Wang, Beijing Normal University

• Aaron M. Kuntz, Florida International University