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The third model, the "skipped generation family" where both parents work far from home and leave their children with grandparents, is so common in Chinese villages that Murphy can quote research showing that more than one fourth of all Chinese rural households belonged to this category in 2012. Murphy also finds considerable variation in the way gender differences were handled based on children's age, their academic performance, their migration status, and local habits. Over the last several decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese people have migrated from rural to urban areas to look for jobs, often leaving their children behind in the villages. [Extracted from the article]

The paper briefly outlines the history of Chinese educational migration to the West and discusses some of the policies and socioeconomic trends that have made China the largest source of international students today. It then presents findings from studies of Chinese students' experiences in Europe, which indicate that personal development and time for reflection is becoming part of what some middle class students and their parents expect from the study abroad experience. This opens new possibilities for European universities in the fields of humanities and social sciences. At the same time we will probably see a growing demand for study abroad programmes that offer training for social service sector professionals, a field where China has a perceived need for developing new attitudes and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including the transnational educational migration in China, intercultural relations, and cosmopolitanism.

The article is based on a longitudinal study of Chinese college students who studied abroad as part of their BA programme in Preschool Education. It first examines the Chinese discourse on preschool education in order to understand the current situation in the students' professional field. The main section then discusses students' attitudes to what they perceived to be key values and principles in early childhood education in the West: freedom, individual rights, equality, and creativity. Students generally expressed strong support for these values and wanted to reform Chinese institutions accordingly. The article argues, based on this case, that while Chinese students abroad may not see themselves as the vanguard of macro-level political reforms, some of them certainly want to play a role in the gradual transformation of Chinese institutions in their respective professional fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade Chinese consultative authoritarianism has been renewed through many political and administrative innovations and tools. Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of consultative and deliberative practices. These practices stabilize and strengthen authoritarian rule, leading to deliberative authoritarianism, an advanced form of consultative authoritarianism. This paper discusses two experiments—deliberative polling at Zeguo, Zhejiang, and a township election in Ya'an, Sichuan. Through these two cases we examine the direction which the development of consultative authoritarianism is presently taking, and the potentials and limitations of such input mechanisms in an authoritarian setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the movement to "construct a new socialist countryside", Chinese officials and social activists are experimenting with transforming rural social and economic relations. They often draw on discourses dating back to the Rural Reconstruction Movement of the 1920s and 1930s, which saw urban intellectuals making similar efforts to modernize the villages and their inhabitants. This paper analyses the different types of relationships between the state, social activists, and villagers in a number of rural reconstruction projects. The state is still the major player in this field, but traditional top-down procedures are often perceived to be unproductive when it comes to micro-level community building, so state actors are forced to find allies among village elites and social activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents observations from a 2006 township election experiment in Ya'an Municipality, Sichuan Province. Gradual institutionalization of elections to Chinese village committees has for two decades fascinated those interested in social and political development in rural China. Elections at the next level—the townships—were seen by many, in China and outside, as a natural next step. For this reason, the election of a township mayor in Buyun in 1998 attracted considerable attention, but the official reaction was negative. The elections in Ya'an juxtaposed against this background are of considerable interest as they can be seen as a way of testing the direction and limits of future reforms. The Ya'an elections were not only for the mayor, but also for the entire township leadership, including the township Party secretary. However, the final selection was—as previously—made at higher politico-administrative levels with the voting results serving as just one input to the decision-making process. For this reason, these elections should be termed “consultative,” and we suggest that such consultative elections can become an important tool in the party-state's cadre management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyzes the effect on the government of China of the return of the peasants to the top of the national political agenda. According to the author, peasants were seen as victims of natural conditions, predatory officials and merciless economic laws. Premier Wen Jiabao claimed that the problems relating to agriculture, rural areas, and peasants are the most important of all the important issues faced by China. It is said that the Chinese government pays attention to those problems because more farmers are experiencing falling incomes and the inequality between the urban and rural areas has increased.