Global citizenship education (GCE) has been implemented in schools as an approach to address growing global issues and increase the internationalization of education. From critical discourse, however, the implementation of GCE seems to be thwarted by neoliberal practices that deepen societal inequality and gaps, and only benefit members of elite groups. This study aims to analyze teachers' perceptions and the school-based concrete implementation of context-specific GCE in China, unveiling not only the co-existence of neoliberal and moral perspective in teachers' conceptual framework, but the key role that teachers and schools play in the implementation. It argues that sampled teachers follow inclusive understandings of global citizenship, their definitional frameworks were profoundly shaped by the multiple interplays between global forces, official discourses, and moral tradition. Given that a central characteristic of GCE is working as an "axis" to group the cross-cutting themes or initiatives of global dimensions within a range of courses and across school ethos, extra-curricular activity and international program in particular. The discrepancies and disparities in GCE development seen between rural and urban schools extend education inequality from local to the global sphere, in which underprivileged students have heightened risks of being marginalized in the global world.
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