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This article provides an overview of the politics of education as they affect regions and communities on the periphery of the People's Republic of China. Drawing on the articles in this special issue of Comparative Education, it analyses tensions related to the attempted imposition of Bejing's homogenising and totalising vision of Chineseness across Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and amongst the mainland's migrant underclass. Also considered here are the politics of comparative educational scholarship, as they relate to a widespread failure to engage critically with the diversity and complexity of Chinese societies. Attributable largely to the West's own 'culture wars', this failure betrays much-touted ethical commitments to social justice and anti-'hegemonic' resistance. It is thus a central purpose of this essay – and special issue – to urge educational scholars to interrogate the politics of oppression and injustice in China and elsewhere 'beyond the Western horizon'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Inner Mongolian nationalism, which was promoted by Japan in Inner Mongolia during the Sino-Japanese War through the intermediary of Mongolian Buddhist Lamaism. It reveals the competition for the religious support of Lamaism among the nationalist political parties in Inner Mongolia, the reformation of Lamaism carried out by the Japanese under the slogan of Mongolian national awakening, and how the Japanese integrated this work into their larger Asian goals, specifically the Japanese army's promotion of its own Pan-Asianism among other Asian peoples as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the core elements of the Manchukuo Military, a puppet force created in northeast China in 1932 by the Japanese Kwantung army, were units from eastern Inner Mongolia, also known as the Xing'an province. These Inner Mongols played a role in the Manchukuo Military far beyond their ratio of the total population, and many of the military officers participated in establishing a pro-Communist regime in Xing'an after the Japanese surrender. An examination of the early history, establishment, and collapse of these forces is vital for a clear understanding of twentieth-century northeast China and Inner Mongolia. This article focuses on the motivations of the Mongols in the Manchuria Incident, the formation of the Japanese-Mongol military collaboration and the reasons for the military insurrection against the Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writing reforms of the Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia from 1954 to 1980 are a notable case of Maoist China's language planning projects. In those years, the Chinese government attempted to implement two consecutive reforms featuring Cyrillization and Latinization of the Mongolian writing system, but neither reform yielded any substantial result and the traditional Mongolian script remains in use today. This article explores the domestic and international dynamics behind these two closely related reform attempts and examines their origins, rationales, processes of implementation, and reasons for failure. Although the rationales of both reforms lay in the communist doctrine favoring easier, more regular, and more universal writing systems that could improve literacy and facilitate communication, hidden behind both reforms were nationalist agendas. The Cyrillization reform sought linguistic unity with the Mongolian People's Republic, while the Latinization reform sought unity of writing systems among languages in China. In both cases, the hidden nationalist agendas undermined the original goals of the reforms, and the reforms lost momentum once contending agendas prevailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]