2 Research Papers and 1 Discussion

Chinese Education & Society, 50: 133–141, 2017 Copyright #�Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1061-1932 print/1944-7116 online DOI: 10.1080/10611932.2017.1330992

Educational Policy Development in China for the 21st Century: Rationality and Challenges in a Globalizing Age

Jun Li

Policies are in the epicenter of, if not in the driving seat for, educational development in any societal context. Since the turn of the 21st century alongside China’s re-emergence as a global superpower, educational policies in China have witnessed fundamental transformations as they have been man- euvered with ambitious plans for national, regional, or system changes. These policies range from compulsory education to higher education, from curricular reform to system innovations, and from quantitative growth in educational access to quality improvement aiming at world-class status.

This special issue of Chinese Education and Society focuses on “New Trends of Educational Policies in China: Transcending Localization and Globalization,” providing updated empirical findings, policy insights, and critical reflections on various dimensions of policy development in China’s education for the 21st century. The nine articles published in this volume illustrate in a lively way the latest policy trends and themes of educational development in China in recent decades.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA SINCE THE 2000s

Since the early 2000s numerous polices have been developed by Chinese government bodies and educational institutions at various levels. Among them are The Decision on the Reform and Development of Basic Education by the State Council in 2001, The Rejuvenation Action Plan for Education 2003–2007 by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2004, The Outline of the National Mid- and Long-Term Plan for Educational Reform and Development 2010–2020 by the State Council in 2010, The Opinion on the Enhancement of the Teaching Workforce by the State Council in 2012, The Decision on Speeding up Minorities Education by the State Council in 2015, Implementation Guidelines for the Comprehensive Promotion for World-class Universities and World-class Disciplines by the State Council in 2015, etc., in addition to the routine five-year national plans. These national policies are not limited to the 22 documents listed in Table 1, and have carried forward the central focus on educational development that was outlined by The Communist Party of China’s Decision on Systematic Reform of Education, which was enacted back in 1985.

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Jun Li is a Professor-Designate at the Faculty of Education of Western University, Canada, and currently Deputy Director of Education Policy Unit, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. He serves as Chairman of the Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) and a Past President of the Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong. He is also a member of the CIES Publications Committee (2016–17), the WCCES Research Standing Committee (2017–19), and the Editorial Committee of Global Comparative Education: Journal of the WCCES (2017–19), respectively.

Three key focuses for reform were laid out by the 1985 policy document: a solidified nine- year compulsory education system, an enhanced TVET system, and a more autonomous higher education system. Chinese policymakers and implementers have appropriated a wide range of calculated approaches for the implementation of these core areas, including standardization, diversification, decentralization, and marketization. They have been kept as the central tasks of educational development over the past four decades and up to the present.

RATIONALES OF POLICY DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION

Among the 22 policy documents in Table 1 are three main rationales for policy development: modernization theory, human capital theory, and a postcolonial catch-up mentality (Li 2016). These three rationales have been constantly highlighted as national ideologies for development since 1978, when China began an all-round reform nationwide, including both socioeconomic and educational change.

TABLE 1 Educational policy trends in China since the 2000s

Policy Documents Dates

1. The Decision on the Reform and Development of Basic Education by the State Council May 29, 2001 2. The Guidelines for Basic Education Curriculum Reform by the MOE Jun. 7, 2001 3. The Tenth Five-year National Plan (2001–2005) for Education by the MOE Jul. 26, 2001 4. The Rejuvenation Action Plan for Education 2003–2007 by the MOE Feb. 10, 2004 5. The Eleventh Five-year National Plan (2006–2010) for Education by the MOE May 18, 2007 6. The Outline of the National Mid- to Long-Term Plan for Educational Reform and

Development 2010–2020 by the State Council May 5, 2010

7. The Curricular Standards for Teacher Education (Provisional) by the MOE Oct. 8, 2011 8. The Guidelines for the Promotion of TVET Reform, Innovation and Research by the MOE Sept. 29, 2011 9. The Professional Standards for Kindergarten, Elementary and Secondary Schoolteachers

(Provisional) by the MOE Feb. 10, 2012

10. The Guidelines of Comprehensive Quality Improvement of Higher Education by the MOE Mar. 16, 2012 11. The Twelfth Five-year National Plan (2011–2015) for Education by the MOE Jun. 14, 2012 12. The Opinion on the Enhancement of the Teaching Workforce by the State Council Aug. 20, 2012 13. The Opinion on the Enhancement of Comprehensive Evaluation Experiments of School

Qualities by the MOE Dec. 3, 2013

14. The Guidelines of Deepening the Comprehensive Reform of Education by the MOE Jan. 26, 2013 15. The Decision of Speeding up the Development of Modern Vocational Education

by the State Council May 2, 2014

16. Promotion Plan for Special Education (2014–2016) by the State Council Jan. 8, 2014 17. The Guidelines of Deepening the Promotion for Punishment and Prevention

System in Higher Education Institutions by the CPC/MOE Oct. 20, 2014

18. The Decision on Speeding up Minorities Education by the State Council Aug. 11, 2015 19. Implementation Guidelines for the Comprehensive Promotion for World-class

Universities and World-class Disciplines by the State Council Oct. 24, 2015

20. Action Plan for Education on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road by the MOE, etc.

Jul. 13, 2016

21. The Thirteenth Five-year National Plan (2016–2020) for Education by the MOE Jan. 10, 2017 22. Popularization Plan for Senior Secondary School Education by the MOE, etc. Mar. 24, 2017

Adapted from Li (2016).

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Modernization theories have historical roots in evolutionary theory and functionalist theory (So 1990). It is suggested “to modernize is to develop, and that a society cannot hope to develop until the majority of its population holds modern values” (as cited in Fagerlind and Saha 1989, 16). Chinese leaders have kept pursuing modernization as a national drive for decades, viewing education as the foundational infrastructure for opening up and reform. The then–national leader Deng (1992) believed that “development is the hard truth” (377), and that education has an instrumental role in national rejuvenation.

Human capital theorists look at education and training as a rewarding capital investment rather than a burdensome form of consumption, assuming that “education and training are the most important investments in human capital” (Becker 1993, 17). Based on these assump- tions, they argued that “human capital promotes economic growth and societal development through multiple ways” and that “after education is developed, human capital is then developed, so is economy, and eventually national power” (Project Team 2003, 13, 31).

Based on the previous two mainstream theories, the rationales for educational development can be summarized as the following equation out of the 22 policy documents:

ER ! QE=SA ! QLF ! MD=EG ! NAC By this simple equation, Chinese leaders take the view that educational reform (ER) will

result in better quality of education and student achievement (QE/SA), which will in turn bring about a higher quality labor force (QLF). A higher quality labor force will tremendously benefit the country’s modernization, development, and economic growth (MD/EG) and eventually lead to China’s national achievement and competitiveness (NAC). Based on these assumptions, more strategic reforms in education become imperatives for policy development in China, especially in the 21st century.

Additionally, Chinese people have been always proud of their long civilization and national achievement up to the 19th century, when modern technology, science and economy in China significantly lagged behind those of such Western powers as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, China was severely threatened by Western imperialism, with some of its territories partly or fully occupied by these powers. In response Chinese politicians and people in general developed a strong postcolonial catch-up mentality, which became almost a collective state ideology driving for national revival and development over a century (Li 2016). This catch-up mentality for nation-building is probably best represented by the more recent policy move to realize the so-called Chinese Dream, officially proposed by China’s current president Xi Jinping. According to him, the Chinese Dream will be the great renewal of the Chinese nation: the prosperity of the country, the rejuvenation of the nation, and happiness of the people (Xi 2014).

All these three juxtaposed rationales are in fact based on one instrumentalist philosophy from the Confucian tradition—I have coined the term the Zhong-Yong model to describe it elsewhere—a Confucian model for development (Li 2016). Literally, Zhong means central, proper, right, or just; and Yong can mean ordinary, mediocre, pragmatic or even universal (Ku 1906, 7). Core to the two frameworks are Confucian values that are based on pragmatism and balanced in a kind of collective rationality and ethical commitment for personal and societal development. For example, educational policies have happened from the very beginning, back to the late 1970s, in parallel with a broader, practical reform of socioeconomic system in China. This model is in sharp contrast with imported approaches that have been adopted by some other developing countries in the South. For example, both Tanzania and Kenya have suffered from

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ineffective and unsustainable development of the universal education movement, which mainly rely on international aid and exotic ideologies of development, as illustrated by Mundy and Read (2017).

The Chinese Zhong-Yong model for educational development has resulted in radical changes in China in recent decades, including greater access to education in terms of coverage of student population and school years, higher education expansion with quality being maintained reason- ably, optimizing the school system and structure, improving the overall quality of education, and reforming teacher education. Some of these changes can be seen as a huge accomplishment in light of achievements such as the superb scores of Shanghai students across all domains in the 2009 and 2012 PISA results (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2013).

POLICY THEMES FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN A GLOBALIZING AGE

Since the 2000s policy themes in education development have been centered and become more focused on four national discourses in China: equality in terms of a democratic mission of education for every citizen, quality in terms of individual and social productivity, efficiency as a national priority based on practicality, and rejuvenation of the nation for nation building and global status.

A typical example can be found in The Decision on the Reform and Development of Basic Education, which was announced by the State Council on May 29, 2001. The following quotation from this policy document illustrates the four national discourses on equality, quality, efficiency, and rejuvenation in just one short paragraph:

Basic education is the foundational project for the rejuvenation through science and education, and plays an overarching, infrastructural and leading role in improving the quality of Chinese citizenry, nurturing all kinds of talent at all levels, and fostering the socialist construction of modernization. To properly prioritize educational development ahead of time, basic education must be placed as the first priority and as the core area for infrastructural construction and educational development, which shall be solidly ensured. (The State Council 2001)

Similar examples can be found in other key policy initiatives enacted in recent decades, such as The Rejuvenation Action Plan for Education 2003–2007 by the Ministry of Education in 2004, The Outline of the National Mid- and Long-term Plan for Educational Reform and Development 2010–2020 by the State Council in 2010, The Opinion on the Enhancement of the Teaching Workforce by the State Council in 2012, and Implementation Guidelines for the Comprehensive Promotion for World-class Universities and World-class Disciplines by the State Council in 2015. The latest Thirteenth Five-year National Plan (2016–2020) for Education by the MOE on January 10, 2017 also highlights these discourses as its guiding principle, expressed for the new stage of educational development:

Comprehensively deepening educational reform, focusing on the augmentation of educational quality, the optimization of educational structure and the promotion of educational equality, speeding up educational modernization, fostering the nation-construction through innovation and talent, contributing more to the overall construction of a mid-income society and realizing the Chinese dream of the rejuvenation of our great nation. (Ministry of Education 2017)

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The four major themes of policy initiatives are actually not exclusive of each other, but are all inter-related and interdependent in many aspects. Meanwhile, these themes have been highlighted dynamically and pragmatically over time. The last two discourses respectively on educational efficiency and national rejuvenation have always remained in place in policy initiatives, whereas a policy focus has been shifted from universal access to education in earlier decades to quality improvement more recently.

Labaree (1997) argued that democratic equality (schools should focus on preparing citizens), social efficiency (they should focus on training workers) and social mobility (they should prepare individuals to compete for social positions) were three policy goals that had fundamentally shaped the American struggle over educational mission in history. It is interesting in the Chinese context, alongside the long journey it took for China to re-emerge as a superpower in the world, that equality for democracy, quality for productivity, efficiency for practicality, and rejuvenation of the nation, have been politically and strategically initiated, maintained and enhanced in the educational goals for development. If Labaree’s threefold framework fits well in industrialized or developed societies in the North (e.g., Canada and the United States), in a globalizing age the Chinese quartet of equality for democracy, quality for productivity, efficiency for practicality, and rejuvenation for nation building may serve educational development better in postcolonial or developing societies in the South, such as Brazil, India, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

RATIONALITY AND CHALLENGES IN EDUCATIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENT

The four major themes of policy development in China over the recent decades have been conceptualized on a framework of rationality. The way of rational thinking originates from classical models in economics, and rationality often “refers to consistent, value-maximizing choice within specified constraints” (Allison and Zelikow 1999, 18). The rational framework assumes that policy behaviors in the process of policymaking, implementation, or evaluation are at least purposively rational.

The rationality in educational policies is in line with the broader context of a global, pervasive neoliberal managerialism and accountability movement—sometimes benign and sometimes malignant to educational development. Chinese policymakers have been firm in making five-year national plans for educational development, a central planning system learned from the former Soviet Union. Up to 2017 the rational approach has been used four times since the 2000s. These five-year plans are crucial in terms of educational agenda, national budgeting, and evaluation of educational outcomes based on a five-year cycle.

Meanwhile, other national initiatives for educational change have also been shaped by rationality in terms of policy guidelines, problem identification, policy formulation, and goal setting. During the former president Hu Jintao’s term, the notion of a “Scientific Framework of Development” has been repeatedly highlighted in almost all national policy actions, includ- ing those for educational reform. It has been continuously upheld in the new Implementation Guidelines for the Comprehensive Promotion for World-class Universities and World-class Disciplines promulgated by the State Council on October 24, 2015.

The national ideology of rationality is often criticized as rather unrealistic and weak in terms of the explanation and evaluation of the policy process for a couple of reasons. For example, it disregards the fact that educational institutions including both schools and universities are

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notoriously bureaucratic, hierarchical, and political. Further, it fails to recognize that any policy implemented usually benefits some specific groups rather than the society as a whole. More importantly, data about educational costs and benefits are never accurately calculable due to incomplete or biased information and many uncertainties in educational settings, and this is particularly true in light of China’s huge size in terms of both population and geographical distribution. These challenges cast doubt on the feasibility of policy goals and implementation, including those predicted through various statistical procedures in almost all five-year national plans for educational development.

Ironically, in contrast to the Scientific Framework of Development, there is a dearth of policy studies in China based on empirical approaches. Instead, there have been too many sporadic theor- etical debates or general discussions on educational policies, little of which have been based on empirical evidence. At the same time, researchers in China generally lack solid training in the disci- plinary field of policy studies. The analyses they present tend to have been neither rigorously designed with appropriate analytic frameworks nor conducted by employing a justifiable research methodology. Many analyses are even based on purely wild judgments, bold generalizations, or speculative conclusions, without being supported by evidence-based empirical findings.

Worse still, critical thinking and alternative theories are hardly ever attempted in policy studies made by the Chinese policy communities that cater to the needs of the central govern- ment. It is not an uncommon phenomenon that soon after the central government makes a polit- ical decision, such as the 22 policy documents in Table 1, analysts will jump into the race of pledging their unconditional support, citing unconfirmed theories, and producing doubtful findings in an effort to proclaim the “political correctness” of these policy actions.

Within this research culture, real policy problems are easily ignored or covered up, and unfavorable findings by policy researchers are usually discouraged (Li 2016). Fortunately, the situation mentioned previously is changing positively, and empirical policy studies are advocated by some pioneering scholars, as shown in the articles collected in this special issue.

NEW TRENDS OF EDUCATION POLICIES IN CHINA: TRANSCENDING LOCALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION

“New Trends of Educational Policies in China: Transcending Localization and Globalization” is the theme of the nine articles collected in this special issue of Chinese Education and Society, covering a wide range of policy initiatives for educational change in China. Among the nine articles are five that were originally published in Chinese journals, with their English versions now available for the first time to the international community. The remaining four articles are original in English, and all are new submissions, peer reviewed for the special issue.

As expected in the Call for Papers circulated through the CIES community and other channels in early 2016, almost all these articles are based on empirical data. Central themes to this collection include theoretical prospects on China’s national planning for educational development, institutional standards and models for systematic change, equality concerns on rural schools and communities, and quality issues from a comparative lens in a global context. They are grouped with the logic from macro policy analysis (the first three articles), to micro policy actions (the fourth to eighth articles), and to a comparative study on school autonomy

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based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development international PISA dataset 2012 (the last article).

The first three articles include this introductory piece and two other articles, all focusing on macro policy trends, such as policy concepts, innovations and frameworks in China. The introductory article by me as the guest editor for the special issue aims at the latest account of educational policy development and research in China, providing critical reflections on the trajectory and features of educational policies, in addition to their central themes and challenges. The second article by Yang Yinfu, an associate director of China’s National Center for Education Development, reviews The Outline of the National Mid- to Long-Term Plan for Educational Reform and Development (2010–2020). He argues that the 10-year national plan aims at building a nation rich in human resources through the promotion of the scientific development of education, and that its fundamental spirit is centered on reform and innovation. These ideas and policy innovations are expressed in a commitment to the priority of educational and human development, promotion of equity in education, and improvement of quality education, to build a lifelong learning system and establish a modern school system, based on scientific and democratic decision making—all of them are in fact great challenges to educational development in China. The third article by Guo Ling reviews the trends of education policy studies in China in the last decade (2004–2013) based on the data collected from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), showing policy communities in different regions of China have imbalanced focuses on research. According to her statistics she predicts that policy studies in education will focus more on equity and quality, in addition to the better understanding of educational policies in other national contexts.

The fourth to eighth articles move to a focus on micro policy actions by various authors. Wei Wei’s article on “Education Policy Borrowing: Professional Standards for School Leaders in China” employs policy borrowing as an analytical framework, and tries to understand why standards-based leadership policy is borrowed by China and how it responds to local Chinese contexts. She concludes that the introduction of this particular policy suggests China’s efforts in its quest for a world-class education system and that China does not blindly borrow this policy from “the West” but rather employs it as a strategy for legislation to reposition itself in the global order. Wang Shiyue focuses on the implementation and incentive of education policies based on the lesson from the High School Admissions Quota Allocation Policy. His case study reveals that a set of education policy implementation and incentive mechanisms revolving around responsibility contracts and target evaluations has already taken shape to guarantee effective policy implementation. However, these highly efficient policy implementation and incentive methods were established on the foundation of quantified policy goals, with the challenge that nonmeasurable or non–performance-based targets such as the goal of educational equality have to suffer from ineffective incentives.

The articles by Shen Youlu and Zhong Yong and Xie Jie touch on rural students’ difficulties in accessing adequate education due to being disadvantaged by their family background. Shen in his article on the dilemma of rural children and their educational options surveyed more than 2,500 migrant and left-behind children in Nanning, a capital city in southwest China. His data reveal that migrant children are often blocked from entry to public schools due to the illegality of their residential status, and encounter many difficulties such as poor discipline and psycho- logical adaptability. Taking an economic perspective, Zhong and Xie look into the consequence of education investment by villagers’ families based on a case study of a typical underdeveloped

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village in southwest China and the role of elementary education in the village economy. Their findings show an enormous gap where a large proportion of the meager income earned by the villagers is “missing.” The structure of investment and spending siphons off the villagers’ disposable income, smothers economic activity in the village, and ultimately exacerbates the impoverishment of the village. The last article in this section by You Guo Jiang and Hong Guo “Transcending the Nature of Refinement: The Policy Development on Liberal Arts Education in China” argues that as China continues to invest in higher education, policymakers and imple- menters in higher education are aware that a narrow focus on professional and scientific training is insufficient to empower students to meet global demands and challenges. Based on qualitative and quantitative research and document analysis, their study examines Chinese policy development and transformation regarding higher education and liberal arts education in general, and the current state of liberal arts education in three universities in Shanghai in particular.

The last article in this special issue by a group of researchers from two American universities is unique in that there are rarely empirical studies that focus on school autonomy from comparative school settings, which is an important emerging area for policy studies. In their article on “School Autonomy: A Comparison between China and the United States,” Jiangang Xia, Xingyuan Gao and Jianping Shen compare school autonomy in China and the United States, top two superpowers in the world, based on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA school data 2012. Examining the three aspects of school autonomy, the authors find that compared with United States, (1) principals from China were less likely to have responsibility over a couple of important school decisions; and (2) teachers from China were less likely to have responsibility over some school decisions. It is also found that (1) schools in China had lower responsibility for curriculum or assessment and lower responsibility for resource allocation, and (2) schools in China had lower level of teacher participation or autonomy. There is no doubt that the findings from the comparison of school autonomy in China and the United States by Xia, Gao, and Shen have policy implications for educational development in a global age.

This special issue on “New Trends of Educational Policies in China: Transcending Locali- zation and Globalization” is the latest attempt to explore the emerging area of policy studies in China’s education. Despite its infant stage, the new area has drawn increasing attention in China and globally, and this special issue serves as one piece of evidence. It will be interesting to see in the future what the rest of the world can learn from China’s experiences (Mahbubani 2015; Hayhoe 2017), including educational policy development. One thing for sure is that there will be more and more policy studies focusing on China’s education, especially those that are based on empirical data, alongside China’s continuous re-emergence as a global superpower in the decades to come.

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