Chinese Education After Mao: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back and Begin Again?

Abstract

Of all the sayings attributed to Deng Xiaoping, his commentary on the colour of cats is surely the most famous. Thanks to the radical campaign against him in 1976, all of China was reminded that Deng did not care whether a cat was black or white – so long as it could catch mice it was good enough for him. This was said to demonstrate his lack of commitment to political principle. As a consequence he was hailed outside China as a pragmatist and a moderate bent on seeking the shortest, quickest route towards his country's modernization, s of the political or ideological implications of the means adopted.

Two Aspects of the Rural-Urban Divide and Educational Stratification in China: A Trajectory Analysis

“…In contrast, most rural schools are locally funded and thus of lower school quality. The unequal resource allocation under pre-reform centralized educational policies contributed to the resource gap between rural and urban school, and this gap has been growing since the policy shifted to a liberal competitive model of education after the economic reform began in 1978 (Hannum and Xie 1994; Hannum 1999; Pepper 1980). In particular, a shift toward decentralization of educational finance policy in the early 1980s reduced resource redistribution to rural areas (Tsang 2000).…”

Trends in Educational Attainment in China

“…Once a focus on academic merit was restored in 1977, many of these schools were closed down, strongly reducing schooling opportunities for rural children (Lin 1993, chap. 2;Pepper 1980). Second, the introduction of the "family responsibility system" in the early 1980s may have resulted in greater reductions in the proportion matriculating in lower or upper middle school than might be expected if the pre-Cultural Revolution trend had continued uninterrupted; it is difficult to be definitive about this because projecting trends into the future even under the assumption of monotonic increases is intrinsically imprecise.…”

Educating Competitive Students for a Competitive Nation: Why and How Has the Chinese Discourse of Competition in Education Rapidly Changed Within Three Decades?

“…My analysis suggested a pattern of pendula swings in dominant discourse regarding competition in education within the three decades from 1986 to 2014, a pattern that characterizes Chinese education reform over most of the 20th century (Pepper 1980(Pepper , 2000. I show this pattern in Table 1 by summarizing and comparing the major arguments about competition in education that I identified from the 101 articles published during the three periods of 1986-1989, 1990-1996, and 1997-2014, respectively.…”