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Inclusive education is a key global agenda that is primarily driven by concern for children's rights. In China, the term is a translated, introduced, foreign concept. The localised practice of inclusion is encapsulated in the policy of Learning in Regular Classrooms, which not only adopts the narrow sense of inclusion for children with disabilities, but it is also dominated by the medical model of disability. An explicit rights-based philosophical foundation for inclusion that is widely accepted and internalised by local Chinese teachers and schools appears largely absent. This paper explores how Confucianism as a moral philosophy may be compatible with the rights discourse and may provide the necessary moral strengths and philosophical base to support inclusion in Chinese schools. The conclusion highlights the needs to pay attention to how teachers' deeper values, motivation, and drives can facilitate inclusive efforts, and also calls for a more explicit human rights discourse to develop in China in the long term. This paper explores the possibility of using the moral philosophy of Confucianism, rather than relying on the explicit language of human rights, to offer theoretical advocacy for inclusion in China. The rich legacy of Confucianism may offer the necessary moral strengths and philosophical convictions for Chinese teachers and schools to become inspired and empowered to take more inclusive initiatives in a bottom-up approach. Confucianism as a moral philosophy is compatible with the international human rights discourse. While a more explicit human rights discourse in China needs time to develop, Confucian principles such as datong (great harmony), ren (benevolence), as well as its educational believes and human rights ideas, may offer readily-available and more accessible inspiration and support for the inclusive education for children with disabilities in line with the social and human rights models. Re-examining traditional cultural values may shed light on modern effective teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines disabled people's digital political engagement in China, which is a largely overlooked issue. Current studies about disability politics often focus on manifest political behaviours in western democratic societies, while the literature on technologies and China lacks the examination of everyday politics of specific identity groups, such as disabled people. This paper attempts to fill the gaps with a broader framework of political engagement. Based on long-term ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, the paper presents a variety of political activities in China's cyberspace, including everyday presence, campaigning for policy changes, networking for disability constituencies, and organised online activism. These suggest both latent and manifest forms of political engagement, which are equally 'worthy' in understanding disability politics in China. The forms also interact with each other to build Chinese disability politics in the digital world. New information and communication technologies, such as the internet, have changed the ways we engage in politics. However, how the technologies have been used by Chinese disabled people for politics is a missing topic. The paper uses a broader framework to examine disabled people's online political engagement. The findings suggest a variety of activities that have explicit or implicit relations to disability politics. The study found Chinese disabled people use the internet to document their everyday life, and, to interact with others and create disability groups. These activities suggest no obvious political targets. The study also found actions with clear political purposes, for example personal or group activities to aim to change discriminative policies. The paper argues all these forms of engagement are meaningful. They interact with each other and contribute to the building of disability politics in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an increasing number of children diagnosed with Autism-Spectrum-Disorder in Canada, this paper focuses on how their mothers, as Asian immigrant women, experience the process of diagnosis and learn to parent their children. By taking two Asian (Korean and Chinese) mothers' critical personal narratives as major data sources, this paper aims to explore the diagnosis process of Autism-Spectrum-Disorder through a sociocultural lens on the intersectionality of (im)migrants and their cultural competence, and argues that their identity (re)construction and learning for parenting take place at the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and disability. This paper highlights possible implications for everyone involved in this 'medical' process, in the context of Canadian or other similar multicultural societies. Asian immigrant mothers usually have to deal with children with Autism-Spectrum-Disorder (ASD) and they have bitter experience of mistreatment tied to race, gender and class. This study reveals how Asian immigrant mothers struggled in their integration to Canadian society as well as their experiences of denial into Canada's medical system. The stories of these two women shed lights on the social and cultural aspects of immigrant mothers' learning strategies, including how they utilize accessible resources and networks for their children's treatment and diagnosis. This paper suggests that policymakers need to consider the social and cultural aspects of diagnosis in immigrant families to better fit their needs and provide them appropriate medical and social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDiscrimination against people with disabilities persists in the Chinese labour market despite policy efforts. Enterprises exploit loopholes by engaging in false employment practices, renting disability certificates to circumvent their obligations to employ persons with disabilities or contribute to the Employment Security Fund. This deceptive practice not only undermines the rights of persons with disabilities but also perpetuates discrimination and marginalisation within the workforce. Additionally, resident committees tasked with assisting persons with disabilities in employment often resort to facilitating false employment due to administrative constraints. The paper stresses the importance of combatting false employment as a human rights issue, urging the Chinese government to take decisive action through enforcement measures and proactive initiatives. It emphasises the inherent value and potential of individuals with disabilities and underscores the necessity of creating an inclusive and equitable society for all members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identities are not pre-given but are socially constructed with performative power. Taking a critical discursive approach, this study explores how the cultural understandings of deafness and the deaf community become intertwined with ideas of the 'state-home' (guo jia) in contemporary China. The paper analyzes forty award-winning biographical essays written by Chinese citizens with hearing disabilities in a 2016 national essay contest. The paper argues that the paradigmatic narratives from the essay contest correspond to the disability policy framework of the Chinese government in the market-reform era. The implications of these statist narratives of deaf identity need to be critically reflected as the human body becomes a central site of governance and governmentality in China during this stage. This study looks at autobiographical essays written by deaf people in China Essay contests organized for deaf people in China have opened up possibilities of expressing and sharing deaf experiences, but such events need to be analyzed critically. In China, the government plays an important role in orienting the disabled peoples' organization The individual's development and national development are inseparable in China's disability advocacy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improper processing of sensitive personal data concerning disabled people in government information disclosure not only violates their privacy rights but also leads to discrimination, stigmatization, and other serious secondary harm, that have long been overlooked. China's procurator-led public-interest litigation system is a powerful tool for protecting the privacy rights of vulnerable groups. This paper contends that procurator-led public-interest litigation, as a supplement to and support for private-interest litigation, assists the Chinese government in fulfilling its international obligations to protect the right to privacy of disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with disabilities are a high-risk group, but they are also the group that is most easily ignored by public policy. Non-disabled people might not be able to imagine how many barriers disabled people encountered during this challenging period. This paper focuses on the barriers encountered by people with disabilities in China and the adjustments made to public policies in response. A deeper, social-physiological factor which should also be responsible is overlooked, and that is the 'empathy deficit'. Human rights and empathetic attitudes should go hand in hand with each other when formulation and implementation of welfare security policies for persons with disabilities during a major public health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quota systems represent one of the most important and widely used approaches to promote the employment of people with disabilities in many countries around the world. Extant literature has focused on how quota systems have been implemented in some European countries and some Asian countries. Few studies, however, have examined the situation in China, where a formal law and regulations for a quota system for disability employment was established over the past three decades. This paper addresses this gap by presenting background on the development of China's quota employment policies, examining the inconsistencies between policy and implementation, and identifying feasible ways to enhance the policy's use to create more inclusion in employment in public and private sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment quota is one of the affirmative action measures, outlined by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in its General Comment, to increase the employment of disabled people in both public and private sectors. Existing literature has studied the implementation, outcome, and effectiveness of the employment quota, majorly by quantitative data, while the empirical evidence of how it influences the right of disabled people to work is relatively limited. The practice of employment quota in China suggests the possibility of underpinning discrimination and exclusion and thus puts disabled people in a more disadvantageous position. This paper empirically examines how the discriminatory effect of the employment quota is shaped, with a particular focus on the interaction between the quota policies and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a qualitative case study of the experiences of visually impaired rural Chinese women migrating to Beijing. The aim is to understand the ways in which disability, intersecting with gender, prompts the migration of women with disabilities. By applying an intersectionality analytical framework, the present study argues that the migration decisions of visually impaired women are shaped by the 'push factor' of discrimination, the marginalisation of women and people with disabilities in the countryside, and the promise of improved life chances and marriage prospects in the city. However, women with disabilities are not just the victims of the intersection of gender and disability. Their rural-urban migration is also a form of agency; it is an attempt to maintain their autonomy and dignity, motivated by the opportunity to avoid the 'othering' to which they are subjected in their home villages. The experience of visually impaired women who have migrated from rural China to urban China have been very much overlooked to date. Despite the disapproval from their families and the less possibility to remain in Beijing in the long term, many visually impaired women from rural China migrate to here and work as masseuses. The research found that the migration of visually impaired women was an escape of taking the gender roles. The migration decisions were forced by the marginalisation of women with disabilities in the countryside and motivated by the promise of improved life chances and marriage prospects in the large city. The rural-urban migration demonstrates the capacity of visually impaired women to act independently and to make their own free choices, at the same time, it is also an opportunity to develop a community of visually impaired people who work as massage therapists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal system for disabled people has progressed significantly since China's government signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 10 years ago. The newly released 'New Progress in the Legal Protection of Human Rights in China' has attracted widespread attention because it advocates that the protection of human rights for disabled people should be reflected not only in legislative and judicial aspects but also in administrative sectors and international affairs. This article explains that the legal system involving dozens of laws and decrees in China aims to break through multiple barriers experienced by disabled persons and is beneficial to building a co-prosperity society in China. With the vigorous development of the international disability rights movement, ways to seize domestic and international opportunities to build a disabled-friendly social atmosphere deserve additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability-related legislation in the People's Republic of China has gone largely unrecognised in the North, with the exception of the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law. Failure to contextualise the law has resulted in a simplistic presentation of the Chinese government's response to disability and impairment. This paper takes a first step towards redressing that imbalance. Recent disability legislation is outlined. The emergence of eugenic- style policies in China tic then reconsidered, with reference to the history of Chinese eugenics, the national interests of the current Chinese government and the internationalisation of disability. The complexity of the Chinese government's response re-opens the debate on the place of prevention within a politics of disablement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored how individuals with disabilities in Shanghai perceive the accessibility of public spaces and their experiences of various barriers in transit to public spaces. We conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with community-dwelling individuals with mild to severe physical, sensory, and multiple disabilities (N = 16). Our findings suggest that despite government efforts to improve accessibility, participants still perceived public spaces to be inaccessible. They encountered physical barriers, social barriers, and unusable accessible facilities in the process of accessing public spaces. Their sense of being a burden to family caregivers also compelled participants to limit their mobility radius. Despite some participants' attempts to advocate for their mobility and accessibility rights, they ultimately chose to compromise when their efforts were not acknowledged. This study seeks to inform policy and practice by increasing understanding of public space accessibility from the perspectives of people with disabilities in urban China. This study is among the first to explore what people with disabilities experience when going to public spaces in urban China, and how they understand these experiences. People with disabilities in Shanghai face various difficulties when going to public spaces. Although there are facilities designed to assist people with disabilities in moving around public spaces in Shanghai, these facilities are often occupied, blocked, or broken, and thus cannot be properly used. Most study participants chose to stay at home and in familiar places to avoid difficulties in going to public spaces and burdening their family members. Participants who tried to advocate for their rights gave up after their efforts were not responded to. Policymakers and practitioners should understand the difficulties of people with disabilities and their families when they go to public spaces and include them when developing and implementing relevant policies and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting an approach that differs from practices in other countries, China has made many achievements in reducing poverty for people with disabilities using two successful types of policies and a unique political mobilization mechanism. However, inconsistencies between the policies and their implementation in the Chinese policy environment has produced new exclusionary effects, hindering the process of social integration for people with disabilities. These obstacles need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial component of the United Nations' Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is to promote 'inclusive education' for the disabled population. As a member of the CRPD, China has made transformative efforts to promote inclusive education for disabled students in the past decades, including policy changes in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE). Through reviewing Chinese disabled students' participation in the NCEE, this article concluded three historical stages – Exclusion, Specialization, and Integration –of China's disability higher education. Although the past few decades have seen significantly increased access to higher education for disabled students due to legal, institutional, and social changes, the goal of 'inclusive education' is yet to come true. The NCEE Physical Examination Criteria shed light on the fundamental limitations in China's current education system predisposed by the state's political lens predicated upon managerialism and productivism. Considering China's present conditions, we outline three ways of promoting disabled students' right to higher education in reference to the CRPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of accessible and inclusive emergency communication provided by the government and public service providers, this article examines a self-initiated and volunteer-driven Disability Support Network. This Network emerged as a civil response during the COVID-19 outbreak in China. The study highlights the communication difficulties and multiple disadvantages experienced by people with disabilities in emergency situations. This reveals the gaps between policies and practices regarding the digital accessibility infrastructure in China. Adopting a WeChat ethnography research method, the researchers collect data from both participant-observation in the virtual field of online chat rooms and semi-structured interviews with Network participants. The study examines the empowering role of the Disability Support Network and the use of inclusive information and communication technologies. The mechanism and deliverables of Disability Support Network, along with important lessons and inclusive communication practices used by the Network, are presented in the article. We argue that comprehensive and inclusive communication strategies for people with disabilities should consider multiple dimensions including formats, content, and situations. We advocate that government and public service entities in China need to take more active measures providing inclusive communications and information in emergency situations for people with disabilities. This study examines the effects of civil society response and communication inequalities in public health disasters in China. The study identifies difficulties experienced by disabled people who are excluded from mainstream information channels. The study provides examples of the best practices in effective communication for disabled people during the COVID-19 outbreak. We especially study an unprecedented volunteer-driven disability support network that emerged in response to COVID-19. The study details how a disability support network is organized, what the network has achieved, and the role social media played in the network's activism and organization. This study highlights the response, self-determination, and self-help actions generated from disability communities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a close reading of Three Days to Walk, a memoir of disability by Chinese writer Zhang Yuncheng, this paper develops a new understanding of self-narrated life writing and its intersection with disability consciousness in the contemporary Chinese context. It examines the changing nature of disability life writing since the end of the early 1980s, a time when the images and voices of disabled began to emerge from effective cultural invisibility and silence. In a move away from state-sponsored ‘triumph over tragedy’ biographical narratives typical of the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, Three Days to Walk is characteristic of a new popular trend to publish self-narrated life stories that reveal unique and intimate histories of disability experience both imbued with and propelled by a burgeoning sense of disability consciousness in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use and impact of the Internet by disabled people in China, informed by the social model of disability. Based on survey data from 122 disabled individuals across 25 provinces in China, study findings suggest that there is an emerging digital divide in the use of Internet amongst the disability community in China. Internet users in our study do not appear to be representative of most disabled people in China. For the minority of disabled people who do have access to the Internet, however, its use can lead to significantly improved frequency and quality of social interaction. Study findings further suggest that the Internet significantly reduced existing social barriers in the physical and social environment for disabled people. Implications for future research, and strategies for increasing reducing the digital divide between the minority of Internet users and the majority of disabled people in China are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID-19 has globally affected many countries and territories. Among COVID-19 influences, the education sector is really becoming an area of public concern. According to UNESCO report, due to COVID-19 more than 1 billion students were affected by school closures in 106 countries. Among that large number of students, students with disabilities need to be given specific attention as they tend to have fewer educational opportunities outside school because of various barriers. Take China as an example, the current study considers there are four challenges that inclusive education for students with disabilities are facing during the pandemic: education policy design lacks a disability perspective; technology offered is not accessible; mainstream schools overlook the responsibility for educating students with disabilities, and parents of students with disabilities are unprepared for distance and home-schooling. The experiences of some related stakeholders being affected by COVID-19 are shared in the article. Additionally, we offer some recommendations to improve the inclusive education provision for students with disabilities during the COVID-19 period, as well as in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio description is in its infancy in China, both in terms of the provision of the service and as an academic object of study. This article provides a useful insight into what Chinese audio description users think of this access service and how they consume it. This information was gathered through two different questionnaires, mostly distributed in the city of Shanghai, although not exclusively. The results show what the profile of the audio description user is, how satisfied they are with the service that is currently available and their expectations for the future. Only after identifying the areas that matter to users the most can both science and industry contribute to guaranteeing their rights in the best possible way. Media accessibility, specifically audio description, is in its infancy in Mainland China as an academic object of study. This study contributes to start bridging this research gap. Regarding their access to information and culture, the voices of Chinese persons with sight loss are hardly heard. This is the first study that takes into consideration their opinion and experience with audio description. The results of this study have had a direct impact on how audio description is delivered in Shanghai. The comparison between China and Europe indicates where audio description in China is in relation to countries in which this access service has already come of age. The results of this study are key to developing audio description in Mainland China following the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' slogan: 'nothing about us without us'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the conceptualization of the body and disability throughout Chinese history. To concisely present a general scene, the article defines three historical periods and, in each period, explains the social context, dominant ideologies, and meaning of the body and disability. The arguments are as follows: traditional China (before 1949) was a homogeneous society, in which a whole, correct body was required and people with impairment were de-humanized; in socialist China (1949–1979), the body was seen as national property and those contributing less were marginalized; and in China's post-communist reform (since 1979), the body has been defined as an individual tool of production and competition. Disabled people have started to emerge as a legislative, political, and social category, who are equal in theory but marginalized in practice, and who are expected to be active and productive through their personal endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenges and opportunities of implementing the CRPD's rights-based model in China, especially the effects of the diminishing space for civil society on the nascent disability rights movement. A disability rights movement emerged as a direct result of the CRPD's adoption in 2008. Two recent restrictive civil society legislations, however, undermined this process. While the diminishing space of civil society has posed great challenges to the movement by marginalizing the rights advocacy approach, it has created an opportunity for service-oriented disability associations to thrive. While service-oriented associations are often ignored by disability studies scholarship and the disability rights movement, I argue that, through these organizations, persons with disabilities in China have done critical identity work and substantively increased their level of independence in their daily lives. As a result, a disability rights consciousness continues to be built in China, despite governmental hostility to political advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People’s Republic of China is home to over 20 million d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, many among them belonging to ethnic minorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two minority regions, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, this article comparatively discusses findings on sign language use, education and state welfare policies. The situation in these domains is analysed through the framework of the ‘civilising project’, coined by Harrell, and its impacts on the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing among ethnic minorities are shown. For instance, through the promotion of Chinese and Chinese Sign Language over and above the use of local sign and written languages as well as through education and the medicalisation of disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the problems associated with introducing integrated education into Hong Kong's mainstream schooling system. The research objectives were to examine the experience of teachers in teaching children with special needs in mainstream schools; to examine the attitude of mainstream teachers towards integrated education, and explore whether the differences in perception of difficulties and attitudes are attributable to types of disability and availability of resources. This was achieved through a research strategy utilising a questionnaire survey combined with individual and group interviews. The results demonstrate that there is a clear hierarchy of preference amongst teachers in relation to special needs children. Students with a learning disability and/or behavioural problems pose more challenges to teachers than those with a physical difficulty. Teachers that had both types of special needs children in a class experience more problems in maintaining classroom discipline, have a greater workload and struggle to manage the disparate academic standards amongst students. Teachers in schools with extra funding provisions, teachers trained to teach special needs children, additional counselling resources and specialist support expressed more accepting attitudes towards children with special needs and their admission into mainstream schools. Resource classes did not exert a positive effect on acceptance. More than 70% of questionnaire respondents were supportive of two positive value statements 'realisation of equal opportunities' and 'a good chance for students to interact'. At the same time teachers tended to agree with the statements 'integration was a burden to the schools and teachers' (over 60%) and 'a painful struggle for special students' (48%). Although there is a general normative acceptance of inclusion, the statistical pattern suggests that teachers' attitudes are not static or based solely on ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research described here was to examine the issue of social inclusion in relation to young people with a learning difficulty in Guangzhou. Ten families were included in this study based on their willingness to participate. The young people had to be over the age of 16 and not attending school. In each family the young person and a family carer (usually one of the parents) was interviewed separately. The article focuses mainly on the experience and words of the young people who express their feelings towards work and other social contacts. The conclusion is that despite greater government awareness of the needs of people with a disability, and the formulation of social and economic policies designed to encourage inclusion this is far from happening at grassroots level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promises and policies in ensuring employment opportunities for disabled people are stipulated in the State Laws and local regulations of the People's Republic of China. It is assumed that having a job implies better integration in society. However, the experience of young adults with learning disability in finding jobs tells a very different story. This article analyses the experience, perceptions and worries of parents of such young adults who are employed or have striven hard to obtain a job, comparing the ideal with a very different reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]