Search

This paper presents the first evidence of the causal relationship between adult children's schooling and changes in parental health in the short and long term. By using supply-side variation in schooling as an instrument for adult children's education and a representative dataset for rural China, we find that adult children' education has a positive influence on the long-term changes in parental health, with limited evidence of any short-term effect. Our results remain consistent after a variety of sensitivity tests. The heterogeneous analyses show differences in socio-economic status and gender, with low-educated parents and mothers being the primary beneficiaries of children's schooling. Potential mechanisms for the long-term effects of adult children's education on changes in parental health include better chronic disease management, improved access to health, sanitation, and clean fuel facilities, improved psychological well-being, and reduced smoking behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses rural migrant children's access to public schools in urban China, focusing on the implications of the recent introduction of points systems for apportioning school places. This approach, first piloted by Zhongshan city in Guangdong province from 2009, has steadily been extended nationwide. Here, we analyse the reasons for its spread and for divergence in its implementation in various urban districts. Notwithstanding rhetorical claims that points systems promote "fairness" or "equality" in the treatment of migrants, our analysis suggests that they maintain or even exacerbate the stratification of urban society, lending new legitimation to the hierarchical differentiation of entitlements. This is consistent with the aim of the 2014 "New national urbanization plan" to divert urban growth from megacities towards smaller cities. However, we argue that the use of points systems should also be seen in the context of an evolving bureaucratic-ideological project aimed at more rigorously monitoring and assessing China's entire population, invoking the logic of meritocracy for the purpose of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study of Gao Village has two aims: to provide an update on Gao Village since 1997, when Gao Village (Gao 1999, 2014) leaves off, and to ponder the future direction of rural China. The article begins with an update on the development of Gao Village from the late 1990s up to 2015, dealing with several major thematic topics such as demography, family and marriage, living standards, education and health care. Using empirical evidence gathered during several years of fieldwork as background, the paper then moves on to discuss the future direction of rural China. This second part covers the current intellectual and policy debate on two crucial issues: land ownership and urbanization. The paper concludes that the Chinese state is still undecided on a grand narrative: whether to travel further in the direction of full-scale capitalism or whether to retain some kind of socialist collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

ABSTRACTBackground:Acknowledging increasing demand of dementia care for patients in China, this paper aims to understand the training needs of dementia care from the perspectives of mental health providers by examining who should be the trainees, what should be the contents of training, and how to deliver the training in China., Methods: Using purposive sampling, data were gathered via four focus group discussions with 40 mental health providers in Beijing, China, in 2011. Data were transcribed by independent investigators and then translated into English. Researchers used content analysis to separately identify themes and codes. Discrepancies were discussed until final agreement achieved., Results: To improve the quality of dementia care, all participants agreed there is a significant need to train both formal or professional (physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, community workers) and informal caregivers (family, friends, or non-kin hired caregivers). For formal or professional caregivers, suggested training content included clinical knowledge of dementia (i.e. pathogenesis, approaches for preventing dementia deterioration) and clinical practice skills (i.e. diagnostic, treatment, caregiving, counseling, communicating skills). For informal caregivers, basic dementia knowledge and home-based caregiving skills such as safety, restorative, stress management, and communication were identified as key training contents. Multilevel support from the government and community centers were considered crucial factors to delivering the training and educating the public to enhance awareness of dementia., Conclusions: Culturally, sensitive education and specific trainings for formal and informal dementia caregivers are urgently needed in China. Policy and program implications are discussed.

This paper critiques current academic usage of the analytic category of ‘civil society’ in recent studies of contemporary China. The problem is not the lack of good empirical work (which abounds), but rather the way in which understandings of ‘civil society’ as applied to China have remained insulated from wider theoretical debates emerging from other parts of the world which have queried the productive utility of these understandings. Specifically, recent studies of China continue to define civil society through its alleged autonomy from the state. This definition has led to unsettling discrepancies between theory and empirical knowledge about Chinese society. Moreover, it has caused researchers to pay little attention to the equally complicated question of whether there are sufficient horizontal linkages among various social actors to constitute a civil society in China in the first place. This paper will argue that lessons learned from the rich civil society tradition and scholarship from other parts of the world may be adapted fruitfully to generate more meaningful and nuanced analyses of Chinese associations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines how flows of people, media, money, technology, and ideologies move through the world, with attention to how these scapes (Appadurai 1990, 1996, 2013) shape identity construction among language learners, both in and out of classrooms. After illustrating intersecting scapes in sociolinguistic terms, I explore the relevance of these ideas to identity formation among language learners, using three case studies. First, I examine the mediascape of hip hop in the ideoscape of education in Hong Kong, where an ELT Rap curriculum was designed for working class students in a low-banded secondary school. Next, I discuss how the confluence of transnationals and cosmopolitan urban residents in Tanzania provides a range of identity options for learners of Swahili that challenge nation-state-based associations of language. Finally, I consider how learners’ engagement in anime and manga from the mediascape is taken up in an introductory university-level Japanese language classroom in Hawai’i. These examples demonstrate how individuals are increasingly learning and using additional languages in the contexts of cultural mélange and new identity zones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to explain why education fails to facilitate upward mobility for migrant children in China. By comparing a public school and a private migrant school in Shanghai, two mechanisms are found to underpin the reproduction of the class system: the ceiling effect, which is at work in public schools, and the counter-school culture, which prevails in private migrant schools. Both mechanisms might be understood as adaptations to the external circumstances of – and institutional discrimination against – migrants rather than as resistance to the prevailing institutional systems. Thus, the functioning of these mechanisms further strengthens the inequality embodied in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Chinese state's commitment to improve teaching quality in rural regions is a key component of national efforts to close the rural–urban education gap. In this paper, we investigate an understudied but critical dimension of quality teaching: teacher expectations. We employ longitudinal data gathered in Gansu Province in 2000 and 2007 to first examine whether teacher expectations for rural youth are conditioned by students’ social origin and teacher background characteristics. Next, we determine the predictive accuracy of their expectations. Our results highlight the ways in which teacher expectations condition the sorting of rural children among different schooling tracks with distinct life trajectories. Significantly, teachers are more likely to hold lower expectations for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, non-local teachers hold lower expectations for rural children compared to local teachers. Finally, a low percentage of teachers expect students to enrol in post-compulsory vocational education. We consider the implications of these results for both educational policy and social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents abstracts of posters presented at the Economic History Association's 2012 annual meeting on topics including the history of fiscal policy in France, the history of education in China, and trade globalization.

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While Chinese academic excellence is gaining increasing international recognition, plagiarism, corruption, nepotism and other negative practices are reportedly rampant in academia in China. Many point the finger at fundamental flaws within the tizhi, the highly structured Chinese socio-political system. I propose re-examining Chinese academia and its practices by applying and expanding Pierre Bourdieu's notion of field as this framework helps to identify the predicament of the “deep water” in which Chinese scholars and institutes find themselves. The four fields I outline – ideological, quasi-official, fame–profit and guanxi fields – spotlight academic practices with “Chinese characteristics.” I elaborate on my own experiences and reflections as both an insider and outsider to these practices, a position which I refer to as a third-eye perspective. I argue that despite the constraints of the “deep water,” the field-oriented angle of investigation reveals that the depths and types of “deep water” vary from one institute to another and also that the internally generated ongoing initiatives promise a step-by-step transformation in Chinese academia. To provoke further thought, I contend that the Chinese case is both a non-exception and alternative to the Western (and other) practices. In so doing, I call for a balanced perspective to re-examine Chinese academic ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It has been well established that better educated individuals enjoy better health and longevity. In theory, the educational gradients in health could be flattening if diminishing returns to improved average education levels and the influence of earlier population health interventions outweigh the gradient-steepening effects of new medical and health technologies. This paper documents how the gradients are evolving in China, a rapidly developing country, about which little is known on this topic. Based on recent mortality data and nationally representative health surveys, we find large and, in some cases, steepening educational gradients. We also find that the gradients vary by cohort, gender and region. Further, we find that the gradients can only partially be accounted for by economic factors. These patterns highlight the double disadvantage of those with low education, and suggest the importance of policy interventions that foster both aspects of human capital for them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes nine brachiopod species (including two uncertain species) in eight genera of the Orthotetidina from the uppermost Changhsingian (latest Permian) of South China. They are the youngest silicified Permian brachiopods known in the world and the last representatives of the Orthotetida, a major brachiopod group that disappeared during the end-Permian mass extinction. Other than two uncertain species, all taxa are new, including Meekella don gluoensis, Perigeyerella guangxiensis, Ombonia capilla, Derbyia nigpi, Schuchertella fushuiensis, Streptorhynchus ovata, and Tropidelasma elongata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: China is home to one-fifth of the world's population. In the setting of a growing and aging population as well as the designation of palliative care access as a human right in 2013, the implementation of palliative care in China gains special importance. Palliative care education is an important precondition to ensure a nationwide access to palliative care. This systematic review details the status of under- and postgraduate palliative care education in China, examining both the students' and physicians' perception, knowledge, and skills in palliative care, and the available educational interventions and programs.Method: Four databases were searched in September 2018, using considered search terms. Titles, abstracts, and, if necessary, full texts were scanned to identify publications matching the inclusion criteria.Results: Nine publications were included. They revealed six findings: palliative care education is lacking in both under- and postgraduate medical education, only a few programs exist. Palliative care as a concept is well known, detailed knowledge, and practical skills are less developed. Chinese physicians consider palliative care an important field to be developed in cancer care, yet the majority of healthcare professionals are not willing to work in palliative care services. Communication should be a main emphasis in palliative care education, especially in undergraduate training. Finally, there is no highly qualified research on under- or postgraduate palliative care education in Mainland China.Significance Of Results: These findings suggest that palliative care education in China is in demand and should be systematically integrated into medical education. Further research on the topic is urgently needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginning of this new century has witnessed two important events in English language education in China. The first is the expansion of English language education into the primary curriculum. In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) required that primary schools located in cities and county seats start to offer English classes at Primary 3 from the autumn of 2001 and that the rest start to do so in the following year (MOE, 2001). The second is the increase of enrolment in various types of Chinese colleges and universities. For example, in 1999 the number of students enrolled in Chinese higher education was six million, but it rose to over 20 million in 2004 (Jin & Cortazzi, 2006). Such a rapid development of English language education has resulted in a number of difficulties and challenges for EFL teaching in China, but the most serious constraint comes from the lack of qualified teachers (Rao, 2010). To compensate for the shortage of English teachers, many Chinese schools are endeavoring to attract more native-English-speaking teachers (henceforth NESTs) to fill up EFL teaching vacancies. In 2006, for example, there were 150,000 foreign EFL teachers working in China (Jeon & Lee, 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has since 2000 started marketing itself as a hub for international education, and there has been a push by the government to attract a large number of foreign students to the country's universities. Sharma (2011) reported that there were around 260,000 foreign students studying in China's universities, and that the aim of the Ministry of Education was to attract around 500,000 foreign students by 2020. However, as China is a so-called ‘emerging destination’ for foreign students, perhaps not surprisingly, the vast majority - around two-thirds - of its foreign student population is currently from the Asia region (Study in China, 2012). Although the largest number of foreign students in China study Chinese language programs, an increasing number are attracted by such programs as engineering and medicine. These courses are also being promoted as English-medium programs, with whole degree programs offered from undergraduate to postgraduate levels in English. Little research has been carried out on how these programs are being conducted, the reception of these programs by foreign students in China, and the impact this is having on China's universities. The attraction of international students to China's higher education institutions would no doubt alter the dynamics of language use on these university campuses. This article reports on the reception and use of English by foreign university students in one such international degree program: international undergraduate students studying for a degree in Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in the School of Medicine of one of China's leading universities. This case study provides an example of how English-medium instruction programs are currently being used to attract foreign students to China's universities, partly in order for these universities to promote themselves as ‘international’ institutions (see also Botha, 2014; and Bolton and Botha, 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essay first describes the Chinese intellectual condition in the age of globalization and the necessity of liberal arts or humanities education, and then deals with the function of humanities education in China’s institutions of higher learning with Tsinghua University as the particular case. Since current Chinese universities are divided into three types: (1) research universities; (2) teaching-research universities; and (3) teaching-oriented universities, liberal arts education always plays an important part in students’ comprehensive schooling although in most of the research universities priority is given to science and technology. As China has a long tradition of humanities education, even long before the establishment of those Western type universities, offering humanities education to all the university students as a major educational task has never changed. Even during the Cultural Revolution when all the universities stopped teaching and research work, students and faculty members were still educated with Mao’s instructions. Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, traditional humanities are suffering more or less. But the author argues that no matter how rapidly the Chinese economy has been developing and how well Chinese people are pursuing the so-called Chinese Dream, it is necessary to pay attention to the humanities and to offer humanities education to young students. The author also offers his reconstruction of Neo-Confucianism as an alternative discourse to various postmodern discourses in the new framework of global culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elites often use social policies to garner political support and ensure regime survival, but social policies are not a silver bullet. Using two waves of Chinese national surveys, I find that a recent policy of abolishing school fees has significantly increased citizens’ demand for greater government responsibility in financing compulsory education. I argue that policy awareness, rather than policy benefits, drives citizens’ demand. Finally, I show that policy awareness has enhanced citizens’ trust in China's central government, but not in local governments. This asymmetry in regime support has two sources—the decentralization of education provision and biased media reporting—which induce citizens to credit the central government for good policy outcomes. Given that citizens’ responses are primarily influenced by policy awareness that is promoted by the state media, this study casts doubt on the use of social policies to sustain long-term political support. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this review, we highlight 60 articles from 1,120 empirical studies in leading language learning and teaching journals published on the Chinese mainland during the years 2008–2011. In preparing the review, we have found Chinese researchers addressing a wide range of topics including language learners’ cognitive processes, their language performance, and language teachers’ professional development. The selected studies document a variety of approaches to improving the teaching of the English language and meeting the demand for proficient English graduates in China. In addition, we have observed that leading Chinese journals have become more receptive to empirical studies and have published an increasing number of qualitative and mixed method studies. However, we also note that research scholarship in those journals is still beset with problems and there is a pressing need for our Chinese colleagues to become ‘discerning’ producers of scholarship. For this reason, we conclude this review with recommendations to Chinese journals, to help them play an even more significant role in promoting high quality empirical research in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The worldview as reflected in the textbooks of the People's Republic of China during 1949–1966 centred on Party-led nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. This article emphasizes both the continuities and changes in nationalist ideology during the Republican and Maoist periods. First, textbooks in Maoist China presented the imperialist powers as shifting away from Britain, Russia and Japan under the KMT government and towards the United States (since 1949) and the Soviet Union (since the 1960s), and emphasized class struggle. Second, the CCP had far greater control over the production of textbooks than the KMT. In this sense, the CCP truly carried out “partified” (danghua) education, a goal shared by the KMT which it never had the ability to achieve. In addition, “the language of Cultural Revolution” appeared with the outbreak of the Korean War. In other words, the education that cultivated revolutionary successors began in the early 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is well established that returns on education are higher for women than for men in urban China. We argue that this finding, while accurate, is misleading owing to its individualist perspective. The income to which most working-age women and men have access includes not only their own income, but also spouse income. Furthermore, decisions about participation and investment in the labour force, both consequential for income trajectories, are likely to be made with partner income and potential income in mind. To our knowledge, no research in China has explored the returns to education enjoyed via spouse income, or the implications of pooling couple income, for illuminating the returns to schooling difference for women and men. In this article, using data from the China Urban Labour Survey (2001), we argue that the returns for women, conventionally defined, are higher than for men because many women trade their own income for spouse income, and this is particularly true among less educated women. We demonstrate, first, that women who are more educated are less likely to get married, while the reverse is true for men. Second, we show that among couples there is evidence of a trade-off in investments in careers. Moreover, among couples, the less educated the woman and the more educated the man, the less likely the couple is to depend heavily on her income. Finally, we show that among couples there is a compensating reverse pattern of returns differences by sex when income is conceptualized as spouse income. Thus, in terms of total couple income, there are no returns differences by sex. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the last decade, rural township governments have been subjected to intensive streamlining and rationalization programmes. This article examines which ongoing reforms and processes are causing township governments to become "hollow shells," and explores the effects of "hollowing out" on township government leaders, staff and rural residents. While the aim of local government reform was to transform extractive township governments into "service-oriented" agencies, this article finds that the current logic of rural governance has produced township governments which are squeezed from above and below. From above, township leaders face the political imperatives of inspections, annual assessments, the need to attract industrial investment and an ongoing process of "soft centralization" by higher levels of government. From below, township staff are drawn out to the villages to enforce family planning policies and maintain social stability. Unprecedented numbers are working as "sent-down cadres" in villages where their capacity to deliver services has been weakened by village amalgamations and the lifting of agricultural taxes and fees. Despite significant boosts to rural health and education investment, rural residents still face a level of government that regards them as problems to be dealt with, rather than citizens to be served. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn all educational contexts, technological developments and changes in pedagogical theory mean that any picture of current practice and attitudes must be dynamic. In many countries, the learning outcomes of foreign language courses now include intercultural communicative competence (ICC), although the precise model for teaching ICC varies even across the English-speaking world. Internet-mediated approaches are widely used to support intercultural learning. In China, the geographical scale of the country and the speed and extent of contemporary socio-economic evolution, allied to long-established and distinctive cultures of learning, make the interface of new technologies and intercultural learning objectives particularly interesting and significant. A small-scale study of college teachers? and learners? perceptions of intercultural classroom instruction, with a special focus on Internet mediation, was conducted in mid-2007, using questionnaires and semi-structured questions, to explore the professional, personal and technical issues associated with Internet-mediated learning of languages and cultures. The results show that textbooks remain the predominant authority, while Internet tools are used as a source of information rather than a means of communication. Findings suggest recognition by teachers and students of the potential of the medium, and of the validity of intercultural goals for foreign language classes, although there are some divergences between the views of teachers and students. However, it is suggested that national policy, local incentives and resources and above all educational traditions do not yet allow optimal use of Internet-mediated approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August of 2012, Martin Wolff, an American English teacher and former lawyer who made a name for himself writing about issues related to English language education in China, passed away in Taizou, China at the age of 65 (see Lau, 2013, for a remembrance). Mr. Wolff's name will be familiar to readers of English Today and to any observers of EFL in China who follow English-language commentary on issues including Chinglish, native English speaking teachers in China, and the difficulty of creating an ideal environment for English learning in EFL contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's township leaders have a bad reputation and the CCP is trying to find new ways to select them. This article first presents data on the education and careers of township leaders in one county in Yunnan, and then looks at two partly contradictory trends in cadre selection: exams and consultations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just how many millions are there? China’s huge English-knowing population of 200–350 million is often cited as evidence of the language being nativized in the world’s most populous country. We may note, however, that the words user and learner are used interchangeably in reference to its speakers of English. When however the focus is on the nativization of English in China, a country in Kachru’s ‘Expanding Circle’ of Englishes, it is imperative to distinguish between users and learners of the language. Kachru points out that institutionalized varieties of English in Outer Circle countries have four functions: the instrumental, the regulative, the interpersonal, and the imaginative/innovative. For English to perform any such functions, there needs to be a large number of proficient bilingual users of the language – which seems not to be the case in China, where English is primarily learned in the classroom as a foreign language. This means that college graduates should have learned the most English, but some constraining factors have prevented the majority of them from obtaining an advanced level of proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates dimensions of children's social welfare in China, from 1987 to 1997. Access to health insurance; Enrolment in and progress through school; Level of access to welfare services in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Looks at the issue of globalization and transnational human capital in China. Internationalization of the country's education and employment system; Benefits that China gets from foreign capital invested in the cohort of returnees; Historical , global and domestic context of the overseas students; Changes in Chinese government policy; Role of foreign organizations and foreign funding in moving talent out of China.

Starting in 2005, the largest "Olympic education" programme ever implemented by an Olympic host country was carried out in schools in Beijing and across China. By looking at the ways in which the policies for this programme were created and implemented, this article challenges the common perception that there was a "master plan" surrounding all aspects of the Beijing Olympics that was imposed by the party-state from the top down with the singular goal of promoting nationalist and communist ideology. It makes the point that by contrast with the suzhi ("quality") education that preceded it, Olympic education contained a de-politicized patriotic education that linked national identity with sports heroes rather than political systems, and re-situated Chinese national identity within an international community in which it would now take its place as an equal partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]