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Adapting the basic tenets of Marxism to outstanding traditional Chinese culture is a major issue in the current and future development of Marxism in China. This paper attempts to sort out the historical relationship of 'contradiction' and 'adaptation' between Marxism and traditional Chinese culture in the process of development. It summarizes the basic ideas that have been developed in the academic community concerning the 'two aspects' involved with adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the typical achievements represented by Mao Zedong Thought. The paper also proposes that the challenge of adapting the basic tenets of Marxism and outstanding traditional Chinese culture should continue to focus on comprehensive innovation as the basic principle, prioritize cultural identity as the crucial direction for further progress, and take daily life as the central field of exploration.

The changing context and increasing professionalization in higher education have ushered in challenges for liberal arts education worldwide. Situated this discourse in the context of Chinese universities, this paper explores (1) Why do we need a liberal arts education that has been accused of being elitist in the twenty first century? (2) Should an effective or ideal liberal arts education evolve with time and context? If yes, what needs to be taken into account to conceptualize a twenty first century model of liberal arts education? (3) How is a twenty first century liberal arts education defined and featured at Chinese universities and elsewhere? Drawing on an analytical framework constructed with the German concept of "Bildung" and the Confucian perspective on knowledge, this paper contends that a twenty first century liberal arts education for universities in China and elsewhere needs to absorb meta changes and movements in society at home and around the world, while ideally rooted in a knowledge tradition respectively. Specifically, it should comprise three essential pillars: humanism education, cognitive education, and global education.

As Paulo Freire's education theory for social change and emancipation is being continually studied and disseminated in East Asia, it has faced skepticism as some educators are unfamiliar with its critical pedagogy or education for freedom concepts. In light of this, scholars have attempted to compare Freirean philosophies with concepts in Chinese philosophy of education as a way of bridging East and West. Diverging from previous studies that use popular Chinese philosophies (such as Confucianism) to connect with Freirean theory, this paper introduces an understudied but compatible Chinese philosophical thought, Mohism, for comparison with Freirean theory. Mohism is a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people's welfare in ancient China. The Mohist bottom-up approach echoes the grassroots emancipatory pedagogy that underlies Freirean philosophy. A comparative analysis of education concepts in both philosophies reveals that despite differences in the educational content of Freirean theory and Mohism, there are similarities in their conceptualization of education for anti-oppression and praxis for social change. Implications for utilizing Mohist philosophy to contemplate Freirean philosophy within the East Asian educational context are also explored. Ultimately this paper revives educational concepts of Mohism that aligns with Freirean philosophy to a broader audience of scholars and educators.

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in 'hard-to-staff' schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the 'Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers' (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu's sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows' position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers' attributes termed as 'localised pedagogical capital'. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education.

A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China's governance. Drawing on Beetham's theory of legitimation of power and Weber's tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of "suzhi" education (education for quality) and China's national university entrance exam ("gaokao"), we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP's one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China's authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice.

Since the 1990s, China's higher education has been under a profound process of restructuring, which involves not only higher education institutions but also the government at both the central and local levels as well as the whole of society. The restructuring is arguably the continuation of the adjustments that have been made since the founding of the People's Republic of China, under a specific historical background and directed by specific educational thought, in a specific social context. Briefly, there are three historical periods: (1) the adjustment in the 1950s based upon the imitation of the former Soviet experience; (2) the adjustment during the great Cultural Revolution, involving the extreme practice of Mao's educational thought; and (3) the restructuring in the 1990s, which began in the 1980s and rests on the pragmatic practice of Deng's educational thought. Although the tasks for each period are quite different, a permanent theme in all reform efforts, however, is that of seeking a mode of educational governance so that the national educational principles and goals can be implemented. This paper, first, briefly reviews the changing social context and China's policy development relating to its higher education. Second, it outlines the guiding ideology and principles of the restructuring of China's higher education in the 1990s. Third, it discusses the problems and the new challenges in the process of restructuring. Finally, it makes some conclusions about the possible development of China's higher education restructuring. (Contains 3 notes.)

In the past 20 years, China's economy has been developing rapidly. Yet is China's education keeping up the same pace as its economic development? What is the current situation for China's education? With the advent of knowledge-based economy, how will education in China adjust itself in order to meet the growing demands of economy? This paper will present an outline of China's education by illustrating the educational system and the way of running education; it will touch on educational reforms and discuss people's educational ideas. It will also raise the problem and offer a possible solution to it.