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Empowering the Child: Children's Rights, Citizenship and the State in Contemporary China
... For example, little is known about whether the features of environments that support the development of rights understandings also may contribute to children's psychological well-being. This question may be especially important to address in non-Western and more traditional cultural environments (e.g., urban and rural Mainland China) where children's rights-especially those pertaining to self-determination and autonomy-may not be emphasized as part of the cultural tradition (Naftali 2009). Accordingly, the present study examined relations between several factors theorized to contribute to the development of notions of children's rights, such as parental and teacher autonomy support and responsiveness, and democratic family and school climate, and their associations with adolescents' psychological well-being, in a sample of adolescents from urban and rural China. ...
... The rural/urban distinction is particularly relevant in China, given the vast differences in modernization, economic standard of living, parenting practices, and traditional values uncovered in prior investigations comparing urban and rural Chinese settings (e.g., Helwig et al. 2014;Zhang & Fuligni 2006;Zhang, Zheng, & Wang 2003). Thus, exploring children's attitudes toward their own rights and their hypothesized correlates in more traditional, rural settings like that found in China may provide a stronger test of their universality than prior work using samples drawn from Western societies or modern, urban environments, where children's rights and autonomy is given more emphasis (Naftali 2009). ...
... As well, reasoning about both types of rights was influenced by urban versus rural setting, with urban Chinese adolescents endorsing children's rights more strongly. This finding probably reflects the increasing attention paid to children's rights in modern, urban Chinese settings, where higher standards of living and parental education levels mean that children's needs and autonomy often receive greater attention than in more traditional, rural settings (Naftali 2009). Interestingly, and unexpectedly, we also found that support for nurturance rights increased with age across both urban and rural samples. ...
This study examined rural and urban Chinese adolescents’ (aged 13–19 years, N = 395) attitudes toward children’s self-determination and nurturance rights, and how these attitudes relate to various dimensions of socialization in their family and school environments, including perceptions of parental and teacher autonomy support and responsiveness and family and school democratic climate. Relations between these variables and psychological well-being also were examined. Perceived parent and teacher autonomy support and responsiveness and democratic climate differentially predicted attitudes toward each type of right and were positively correlated with adolescents’ psychological well-being. Our findings suggest that environments that are structured more democratically and that are responsive to children’s autonomy needs contribute to their psychological health and well-being in diverse cultural settings.
... This period saw a refocusing on western theories such as Piaget's developmental theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, and Montessori Education as well as curriculum models such as the Italian Reggio Emilia approach and the United States' High/Scope curriculum (Guo, Kuramochi, & Huang, 2017;Qi & Melhuish, 2017). In addition, during the third wave of ECE reform, the Chinese government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (henceforth UNCRC, United Nations, 1989), signalling the willingness and readiness of China to adopt a "universally agreed" norm for children's rights and development (Liu & Feng, 2005;Naftali, 2009). The curricula released in this time period, such as the latest curriculum which will be discussed in the next paragraph, are influenced by all those complicated and even contradictory discourses. ...
... Besides, the Confucian ideology of filial piety and etiquette have a very strong influence on how young children are viewed and educated. Several studies have shown that great importance has been attached to the values of being obedient to parents and teachers, and respecting older people (see Li & Chen, 2017;Naftali, 2009). In New Zealand, the indigenous Māori culture and values have also influenced how young children are viewed and educated. ...
Positioning young children as citizens, now rather than as citizens in waiting, is an emerging discourse in early childhood education internationally. Differing discourses related to young children and early childhood reveal various ideas of children as citizens, and what their citizenship status, practice and education can be. This paper analyses the national early childhood education (ECE) curricula of China and Aotearoa New Zealand for the purpose of understanding how children are constructed as citizens within such policy discourses. Discourse analysis is employed in this study as a methodological approach for understanding the subjectivities of young children and exploring the meanings of young children’s citizenship in both countries. Based on Foucault’s theory of governmentality, this paper ultimately argues that young children’s citizenship in contemporary ECE curricula in China and New Zealand is a largely neoliberal construction. However, emerging positionings shape differing possibilities for citizenship education for young children in each of these countries.
... Within this changing socioeconomic, cultural, and moral landscape, Chinese people's views of children and childhood development have correspondingly evolved. On the one hand, childhood has been increasingly recognised as a distinct social category with special psychological and emotional needs (Crabb, 2010;Naftali, 2009;Xu, 2017). Researchers and legal scholars have called for policy intervention to protect children's mental and psychological wellbeing, particularly for those in vulnerable situations (Liu et al., 2017;Wang, 2002). ...
The protective restriction of children moving into adulthood has attracted growing attention among the public and experts. This article ethnographically explores how China's suburban teachers practice a selective restriction to help children mature properly. It demonstrates that while educators work to mitigate students' concrete contact with the adult environments, they also inculcate students with the harsh realities of the adult world. It contends that educators' paradoxical attitudes are closely related to the transitional view of childhood in contemporary Chinese society. Consequently, this ideal childhood with appropriate maturity has become a delicate status to achieve and—more importantly—not to overdo.
... Moreover, since the ratification of the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in China in 1992 by the National Congress, significant changes have occurred in the way that children's rights are considered, conceptualised and enacted in China (Naftali, 2009(Naftali, , 2014. However, more research is needed to illuminate how to promote children's participation in all aspects that matter to them, including transitions from preschools to primary schools. ...
This interim report presents the ongoing progress of a collaborative project between the Centre for Teacher and Early Years Education (CTEY), UCL Institute of Education and the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University (BNU), which aims to (re)construct school readiness from Chinese children's perspectives. In this report, we first set out the context and rationale for carrying out this project (see Section 1). Then, we introduce the overarching research questions of this project, followed by a detailed account of the research design and the instruments for conducting research with young children (see Section 2). Subsequently, we report the pilot study we have conducted and present the preliminary findings (see Section 3). Finally, we outline the first round of fieldwork that has been carried out in seven early years settings of different backgrounds in Beijing (see Section 4), together with a timetable illustrating the next steps and upcoming milestones of this research project (see Section 5).
... Moreover, since the ratification of the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in China in 1992 by the National Congress, significant changes have occurred in the way that children's rights are considered, conceptualised and enacted in China (Naftali, 2009(Naftali, , 2014. However, more research is needed to illuminate how to promote children's participation in all aspects that matter to them, including transitions from preschools to primary schools. ...
This interim report presents the ongoing progress of a collaborative project between the Centre for Teacher and Early Years Education (CTEY), UCL Institute of Education and the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University (BNU), which aims to (re)construct school readiness from Chinese children's perspectives. In this report, we first set out the context and rationale for carrying out this project (see Section 1). Then, we introduce the overarching research questions of this project, followed by a detailed account of the research design and the instruments for conducting research with young children (see Section 2). Subsequently, we report the pilot study we have conducted and present the preliminary findings (see Section 3). Finally, we outline the first round of fieldwork that has been carried out in seven early years settings of different backgrounds in Beijing (see Section 4), together with a timetable illustrating the next steps and upcoming milestones of this research project (see Section 5).
... The intensified care and investment in children led scholars to focus on the experience of the only-child generation. Drawing upon the results of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai schools and homes in [2004][2005], as well as textual sources published in the past three decades, Naftali (2009) suggests that a new mode of speaking and thinking about children's rights is emerging. This emergent child rights discourse casts children as 'subjects' rather than objects and as 'independent' persons rather than mere 'appendages' to their families, society or the nation. ...
This article examines how the experience of childhood has changed in urban China against the backdrop of the wider political, social and economic transformations in the 20th century. Drawing on 95 life history interviews in three urban sites in China, it explores the nature, origins and impact of continuities and changes in childhood experiences across three generations. While expressive intimacy between the only-child generation and their parents increased, the three-generational comparison disputes previous theorizing about the modernization of childhood and the value of children based upon a Euro-American empirical reality. Rather than being trapped in a linear progression model, this article reveals that while the economic value of children as family helpers has dramatically reduced across three generations, the economic prospect of children as old age security goes hand in hand with the emotional value of children, which is shaped by the cultural tradition of filial piety, social welfare context and demographic structure. As a consequence, in contrast with the existing argument of an individualization of childhood in China, this article indicates that the youngest generation – the only-child generation – experienced an increasing regimentalization of childhood, exercised by their parents and driven by both neoliberal market and post-socialist state forces. This article also draws attention to the gender difference in childhood experience across three generations and reveals how the one-child policy has contributed to the increasing value of girls in urban China.
... However, few studies in China have investigated children's agency. Naftali (2009) explores liberal notions of rights and citizenship for children's subjectivity in Shanghai schools and homes, and examines the tension between autonomy and obedience in contemporary Chinese childhood (Naftali, 2014). Goh and Kuczynski (2009) investigate child agency within the child's relationship with parents and grandparents in Xiamen, China. ...
In this article we consider historical and contemporary ideologies of childhood in China and critically examine notions of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in Chinese children’s literature. We analyse the themes and knowledge that relate to relevant historical and contemporary political events and policies, and how these contribute to the production of childhoods. We focus on three images of childhoods in China: the Confucian child, the Modern child and the Maoist child. Each of the images reflects a way of seeing, a perspective about what a child ought to be and become, and what their childhood should look like. Everyday media are reflected in the texts and stories examined and portray both ‘imagined’ and ‘real-life’ narratives of children and their childhoods. The stories, and the connected power relations, represent an important link between the politics of childhood and the pedagogy associated with these politics, including large-scale state investment in the production of desired, ideal and perfect childhoods. Through such an examination of contemporary and historical children’s literature and media in China we also explore the ways in which contemporary media revitalise particular notions of child agency.
... The seemingly paradoxical coexistence of the "weakening and flipping of the generational axis" (Santos & Harrell, 2017, p. 20) and the enduring "andrarchy, or male domination" (Santos & Harrell, 2017, p. 31) may also have been a result of the prioritization of national survival as the main goal of social changes. The revolution in the parent-child hierarchy, beginning in the early twentieth century and renewed under the communist ideology, China's recent modernization, and the One-Child Policy, has been part of a long-lasting attempt to save the failing Chinese nation and to build a modern state, with reformed parent-child dynamics at the core of its basic social units (Naftali, 2009). Perhaps also driven by anxiety about national survival, Republican male intellectuals, the socialist state, and the global capitalist market mobilized women to learn and to work (Barlow, 2004;Glosser, 2003;Wang, 2005). ...
Fathers and fatherhood are increasingly visible in social science scholarship and public discourse, although the father’s different roles are yet to be integrated. Moreover, most existing studies on fathers and fatherhood focus on either European or North American fathers, or contemporary non-Western fathers; little is known about the historical changes in fatherhood culture in non-Western contexts. This article explores how elite fathers in Republican, Socialist, and Reform-era China see their roles as parents and as men amidst dramatic social changes in intergenerational and gender relations. A close examination of five elite fathers’ family letters and autobiographical writings reveals that the parent–child hierarchy began to diminish as early as Republican-era China and continued to decrease during the Socialist and Reform eras, as seen in fathers’ increasing recognition of their children’s autonomy and the heightened sense of intimacy in the father–child bond. However, changes in gender relations, especially in the fathers’ generation (as opposed to the fathers’ gender beliefs and practices towards their children) followed a much less straightforward path. The asynchronized changes in different facets of Chinese fatherhood may be attributed to the unique and complicated modern history of China in the twentieth century.
Most research concerning the extent to which children are physically punished has focused on only one parent of each child. It fails, therefore, to document the degree to which, within two-parent families, parents' punishments are similar, and how both parents' punishments combine. As a result, the important clinical question of how much physical punishment children receive has not been addressed. These issues were investigated by separately interviewing both mothers and fathers in 99 two-parent families. The interviews focused on the type, frequency and severity of parental punishments. Significant levels of association were found between mothers' and fathers' use of physical punishments, indicating that if one parent physically punishes frequently or severely, the other parent is also likely to do so. When the combination of both parents' punishments was considered, the extent of physical punishment received by children was found to be considerably greater than that reportedly administered by mothers, or by fathers, alone. These findings demonstrate the clinical importance of taking into account both parents' punishments of their children.
Preface PART I: DECENTRALIZED LEGAL AUTHORITARIANISM 1. Chinese Workers' Contentious Transition from State Socialism 2. Stalled Reform: Between Social Contract and Legal Contract PART II: RUSTBELT: PROTESTS OF DESPERATION 3. The Unmaking of Mao's Working Class in the Rustbelt 4. Life after Danwei: Surviving Enterprise Collapse PART III: SUNBELT: PROTESTS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION 5. The Making of New Labor in the Sunbelt 6. Dagong as a Way of Life PART IV: CONCLUSION 7. Chinese Labor Politics in Comparative Perspective Methodological Appendix: Fieldwork in Two Provinces Notes Bibliography Index
School moral education in any country is carried out in a particular social and cultural context. The renewal of policy and practice in moral education in China has come about because of a rapidly changing Chinese society, as a result of the government's ‘reform and opening up’ policy since the end of the 1970s. The consequent changes in the Chinese economy, politics and culture are innovatory and challenging. It is these changes that have brought about, and will continue to bring about, new ideas and practices in moral education. This paper describes how Chinese moral education has been influenced according to recent social changes and modernization in China, including the formation of the market economy, the impact of globalization, mass media and the Internet, cultural diversity and value pluralism, trends to democratization in politics, and structural changes in the family. It also considers the kind of social issues and challenges which are being dealt with and anticipated in policy, theory and practice in contemporary Chinese moral education.
Debating human rights in China : introductory perspectives -- The conception of human rights in the West : historical origins and contemporary controversies -- Culture and human rights : between universalism and relativism -- China and the introduction of Western thought -- Ideas of human rights in the early twentieth century : the quest for national salvation -- The new culture movement and beyond : human rights and the liberation of the individual -- The Nanking decade, 1927-1937 : liberal and radical voices on human rights -- Human rights debates in wartime China : between individual freedom and national salvation -- The 1950s : human rights debates on two sides of the Taiwan Strait -- The domestic challenge over human rights : the Democracy Wall activists and the official reaction, 1978-1982 -- A contested and evolving discourse : human rights debates since the late 1980s -- The Chinese human rights debate : conclusion and prospects (Less)