Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens: “Population Quality” Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education

China Quarterly

Volumn 177, Issue , 2004, Pages 1-20

  Murphy, Rachel ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION; HUMAN RESOURCE; PRIMARY EDUCATION; RURAL POLICY; RURAL POPULATION;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 2142705801     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: 14682648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0305741004000025     Document Type: Article

References (98)

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9. Børge Bakken, The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control and the Dangers of Modernity in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 50–72
10. Ann Anagnost, National Past-times: Narrative, Representation and Power in Modern China (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
11. Bakken, The Exemplary Society, p. 65.
12. Anagnost, National Past-times, pp. 76–80.
13. Bakken, The Exemplary Society, p. 62.
14. The suzhi of urbanites, men and Han Chinese is higher than that of peasants, women and minorities. Chen Jiyuan, Zhongguo nongye laodongli zhuanyi (The Transfer of China's Agricultural Labour) (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1993) p. 234.
15. Wang Xiaoqiang and Bai Nanfeng, The Poverty of Plenty (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991).
16. Bradley A. Levison and Dorothy Holland, “The cultural production of the educated person: an introduction,” in Bradley A. Levinson, Douglas E. Foley and Dorothy C. Holland (eds.), The Cultural Production of the Educated Person (New York: State University of New York Press) pp. 1–54.
17. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 303–338.
18. Chinese schools provide immunization, lunches and hygiene instruction, all important for helping students stay healthy and in class. Kevin Watkins, The Oxfam Education Report (London: Oxfam, 2000), p. 41.
19. Economists refer to “population quality” as “human capital.” Mark R. Montgomery, Mary Arends-Kuenning and Cem Mete, “The quantity-quality transition in Asia,” Policy Research Division Paper No. 123 (New York: Population Council, 1999).
20. “Human capital” is being adopted in Chinese literature. Zhang Zaisheng, “Renli ziben touzi: Zhongguo ke chizu fazhan de shengzhang dian” (“Human capital investment: point of growth in China's sustainable development”), Renkou xuekan (Population Journal), Vol. 2, No. 120 (2000), pp. 3–8.
21. Gao Changjiang, “Xiangcun xiandaihua yu xiangcun wenhua jianshe” (“Rural modernisation and cultural construction in the countryside”), Zhongguo nongcun guancha (China Rural Survey), No. 4 (1995), pp. 47–56
22. Chen Jiyuan, The Transfer of China's Agricultural Labour, pp. 227–228
23. Wang and Bai, Poverty of Plenty.
24. Wang Jingyi and Zhou Zhitai, “Shichang jingji tizhi de jianliyujihua shengyu gongzuo de kaizhan” (“Building the market economy system and the opening work on birth planning”), Renkou xuekan, Vol. 6, No. 118 (1999), pp. 58–62
25. Zhang Zaisheng, “Human capital investment.”
26. The 1985 Central Committee document on education reform states that modernization depends on “suzhi education.” After years of debate, the State Council passed its 1999 Resolution on Quality Education and Guidelines for Implementation. See Hao Keming, Twenty Years of Reform to China's Education System (Zhengzhou: Zhongchuan guji chubanshe, 1998), pp. 208–227
27. Luan Chuanda, “Research and thoughts on creating quality education,” Jilin jiaoyu kexue: pujiao yanjiu (Jilin Education Science: Research on Popularizing Education), No. 8 (1999), pp. 8–12
28. Andrew Kipnis, “The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” The China Journal, No. 46 (July, 2001), pp. 1–24.
29. Jonathon Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), p. 220.
30. Xue Lanrong and Tianjian Shi, “Inequality in Chinese education” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 10, No. 26 (2001), pp. 107–124.
31. Dean cites Polanyi's argument that economic liberalism is enforced by the state, so doesn't contradict interventionism. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), pp. 147–152
32. Mitchell Dean, The Constitution of Poverty (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 10.
33. Zhang Huaqiao, “Nongcun jiaoyu zai weiji zhong de nahan” (“The call of the countryside in crisis”), Zhongguo nongcun (China's Peasants), No. 3 (2000), pp. 30–32. Zhang criticizes rural–urban inequalities in educational investment.
34. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (Tavistock: Harvester, 1977), p. 27
35. Anagnost, National Past-times, p. 76.
36. Ellen R. Judd, The Chinese Women's Movement: Between State and Market (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 187–189.
37. Judd discusses this in relation to improving the suzhi of rural women through skills training. McNay, Foucault, p. 76.
38. For the life chance implications of labelling, see Jenkins, Social Identity, pp. 22–23. I did not encounter people operating outside thesuzhi value system by, for example, becoming hooligans: villagers were preoccupied with their livelihoods.
39. This section draws on Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth Century China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
40. Mobo Gao, Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China (London: Hurst and Company, 1999), p. 103.
41. Rivercounty County Almanac (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang chubanshe, 1995), p. 733.
42. Rivercounty County Almanac, pp. 732–733.
43. In debate about the contribution of Cultural Revolution education to rural livelihoods, Jonathon Unger and Glen Peterson argue that the quality of education under Mao was poor, so children lost interest. Jonathon Unger, Education Under Mao (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
44. Glen Peterson, “State literacy ideologies and the transformation of rural China,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 32 (July 1994), pp. 95–120.
45. Dongping Han and Mobo Gao argue that practical education under Mao improved livelihoods. Dongping Han, “Impact of the Cultural Revolution on rural education and economic development: the case of Jimo county,” Modern China, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2001), pp. 59–90.
46. Mobo Gao, Gao Village, pp. 92–121.
47. Pepper, Radicalism and Educational Reform, pp. 351–364.
48. Keith Lewin, Angela Little, Xu Hui and Zheng Jiwei, Educational Innovation in China: Tracing the Impact of the 1985 Reforms (Harlow: Longman, 1994), pp. 12–32.
49. Ryan S. Johansson, “ ‘Implicit’ policy and fertility during development,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1991), pp. 377–413 discusses the rise of “good parent” norms in Europe at pp. 396–402.
50. Naila Kabeer, “Inter-generational contracts, demographic transitions and the ‘quantity-quality’ tradeoff: parents, children and investing in the future,” Journal of International Development, No. 12 (2001), pp. 463–482.
51. Cecilia N. Milwertz, Accepting Population Control: Urban Chinese Women and the One Child Family Policy (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997). Milwertz examines the use of “care” to cultivate quality and establish inter-generational contracts.
52. Kabeer, “Inter-generational contracts,” pp. 564–565
53. Milwertz, Accepting Population Control, pp. 44–45.
54. Zhongguo wushi nian de Jiangxi 1949–1999 (Fifty Years in China's Jiangxi Province 1949–1999) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000), pp. 515–516. The 1995 target for 2000 was to have 99% of children enrolled in primary school and 85% enrolled in junior high school.
55. John C. Caldwell, “Mass education as a determinant of the timing of fertility decline,” Population and Development Review, No. 6 (1980), pp. 225–255
56. Susan Greenhalgh and Jiali Li, “Engendering reproductive policy and practice in peasant China: for a feminist demography of reproduction,” Signs, Vol. 20, No. 31 (1995), pp. 601–641, at pp. 612–13.
57. Parents need a son to carry on the patrilineage and provide old age security. Susan Greenhalgh, “The peasantisation of the one-child policy in Shaanxi” in Deborah Davis and Steven Harrell (eds.), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (California: University of California Press, 1993).
58. School visits. Item on suzhi education and equipment, Jian Prefecture News, 11 November, 2000, 22.30hrs.
59. Lewin et al., Educational Innovation, p. 37.
60. See Lynn W. Paine, “Making schools modern: paradoxes of educational reform,” in Andrew G. Walder (ed.), Zouping in Transition (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 205–236. Paine's discussion does not suggest that guanbi is practised in Zouping.
61. Mobo Gao, Gao Village, p. 101. During the Cultural Revolution, the need to board in high schools prevented many from attending because of cost and distance.
62. For testing and national competitiveness in England: John Beck, Morality and Citizenship in Education. (London: Cassell, 1988)
63. Maurice Galton and John MacBeath, “A life in teaching,” (London: NUT, 2002).
64. For China: Ye Shangxiong, “Suzhi jiaoyu de zhongdian: peiyang chuanxin jingshen he shijian nengli” (“The focus on suzhi education: fostering a creative spirit and practical ability”), Zhongguo jiaoxue xuekan (China Education Journal), No. 2 (2000), pp. 8–11.
65. Liu Shaochao, “How to unknot the problem of converting community teachers to regular teachers,” Ban yuetan (China Comment), No. 16 (1999), pp. 52–53.
66. Tape 21A, 20 October 2000
67. Tape 21B, 20 October 2000
68. Tape 25, 8 November 2000.
69. Lewin et al., Educational Innovation, p. 155.
70. Jing Lin, Education in Post-Mao China (Westport: Praeger, 1993), pp. 24–27.
71. Zhongxiao xue sushi jiaoyu keben, jiankang jiaoyu (Middle Primary Suzhi Education Textbook, Health Education) (Beijing: 21st Century Publications, 1999) used at Geping Village Primary School, visited 6 October 2000.
72. Hao Keming, Twenty Years, p. 230.
73. Weber, “Turning peasants.”
74. Deborah Reed-Danahay, Education and Identity in Rural France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
75. Rachel Murphy, How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China(NewYork:Cambridge University Press, 2002).
76. Si nianji laodong keben (Fourth Year Labour Textbook) (Nanchang: Jiangxi Agricultural Technology Education Bureau Publishers, 1999).
77. Lynn Payne, “Making schools modern,” pp. 232–233.
78. Mobo Gao, Gao Village, p. 104. The aim ofagricultural lessons during the Mao era was to give practical knowledge to as many people as possible. Since then agricultural lessons have been incorporated into suzhi education, with the aim of allocating knowledge according to people's role in nation-building.
79. For “education” outside school, see Laura Rival, “Formal schooling and the production of modern citizens in the Ecadorian Amazon,” in The Cultural Production of the Educated Person, pp. 153–167
80. Fei Xiaotong, From the Soil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 45–47.
81. Charles Stafford, The Roads of Chinese Childhood: Learning and Identification in Angang (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
82. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (Sage: Beverly Hills, 1977). The concept of “symbolic violence” towards non-elite people in schools can be applied to parents, p. 115.
83. Victoria J. Baker, “Education for its own sake: the relevance dimension in rural areas,” Comparative Education Review, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1989), pp. 507–518
84. cited in Glen Peterson, “State literacy,” p. 118.
85. For education shaping off-farm aspirations, see Anita Chan, Richard Madsen and Jonathon Unger, Chen Village Under Mao and Deng (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 252–253.
86. Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), p. 45.
87. Nationalism, p. 44.
88. Li Jingneng, “Lun xiandaihua renkou suzhi de jiben neihan” (“Discussing the fundamental meaning of modernizing population quality”), Zhongguo renkou kexue (China Population Science), Vol. 1, No. 76 (2000), pp. 56–58, at p. 56.
89. Calhoun, Nationalism, p. 44.
90. Bakken, The Exemplary Society, pp. 31–34, 177, 179–183.
91. Rachel Murphy, “Fertility and distorted sex ratios in a rural Chinese county: culture, state and policy,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 29, No. 4 (December 2003).
92. Mobo Gao, Gao Village, p. 117.
93. Elaine Unterhalter, “Citizenship, difference and education: reflections inspired by the South African tradition,” in Nira Yuval-Davis and P. Werbner (eds.), Women, Citizenship and Difference (London: Zed Books, 1999), pp. 100–117.
94. Class notes, 20 September 2000.
95. Zhu Yongxin and Yang Shubing, “Discussing education and the cohesiveness of the people of China,” Education Research, No. 6 (2000), pp. 3–9.
96. Hao Keming, Twenty Years, pp. 209, 219.
97. Victor Nee, “Sources of New Institutionalism,” in Mary C. Brinton and Victor Nee (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Sociology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 9.
98. Thomas Lemke, “The birth of bio-politics: Michel Foucault's lecture at the College de France onneo-liberal governmentality,” Economy and Society, No. 30(2001), pp. 190–207 at p. 191. This resonates with Lemke's argument that the modern state and the modern autonomous individual “co-determine each others emergence.”