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This study explores two aspects of the privatization of childhood in contemporary urban China: the emergent discourse on children's privacy and children's growing seclusion within the home. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author describes urban caregivers' engagement with the issue of children's privacy, and argues that we are now witnessing a transformation in Chinese notions of childhood, privacy and subjectivity. The result of a complex interaction between official discourses, demographic changes and economic forces, this transformation is also a product of the persistent influence of Confucian values, and the unique childhood experiences of a particular generation of urban Chinese parents. (Contains 15 notes.)

Schools constitute key sites for legal socialisation, the process whereby youth develop their relationship with the law. Yet, what does legal socialisation entail in the context of an authoritarian party-state such as China? The article examines this question by analysing Chinese citizenship education textbooks of the Xi era. The study finds that China's current textbooks contain elements associated with both a coercive and a consensual approach to legal education. Nonetheless, it is the consensual orientation that receives greater stress, as the books highlight the positive benefits of legal compliance and endorse the idea that youth should advance beyond the external supervisory stage to the self-discipline level of legal consciousness. Reflecting the attempt of the Chinese Communist Party leadership to draw on legality as a key source of legitimacy, this approach is nonetheless undermined by the propagandist tone of the textbooks and their ambiguous messages regarding citizens' ability to challenge China's existing laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of 'war education'. In China, an extensive 'Patriotic Education' campaign and an expanded 'National Defense Education' curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused on urban elite youth, while overlooking the reception of these programs by non-urban, non-elite populations. The present study addresses this issue by examining youth perceptions and experiences of military training courses in urban and rural high schools. Drawing on the analysis of Chinese publications in the 2000s and on data from field interviews with students of different backgrounds, the study finds that youth military training constitutes a contentious program. Although the Chinese government promotes the program as crucial for military strengthening and the fostering of a patriotic spirit, PRC academic and media writers provide alternative rationales for the program, which at times undermine the logic of government articulations. Meanwhile, interviews with youth document divergent attitudes and even resentment towards the program, especially among city youth. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that military-training courses necessarily contribute to the increased 'militarization' of Chinese youth and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, the Chinese party-state has attempted to teach its youth how to think and speak about the nation through a "patriotic education" campaign waged in schools, the media and on public sites. The reception of these messages by youth of different social backgrounds remains a disputed issue, however. Drawing on a multi-sited field study conducted among rural and urban Han Chinese youth attending different types of schools, this article explores the effects of the patriotic education campaign on youth conceptions of the nation by examining the rhetoric high-school students employ when asked to reflect upon their nation. The study reveals that a majority of youth statements conform to the language and contents of the patriotic education campaign; however, there are significant differences in the discursive stances of urban youth and rural youth and of those attending academic and non-academic, vocational schools. These findings call into question the party-state's current vision of China as a "unified" national collectivity. They highlight the existence of variances in the sense of collective belonging and national identity of Chinese youth, while underscoring the importance of social positioning and perceived life chances in producing these variances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date, however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state’s ‘patriotic education’ campaign waged in schools and in the mass media. Studies have also overlooked how rural and urban youth in China juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese media that they consume with school and domestic media messages. Drawing on interviews with middle school students in Shanghai and Henan, the present study addresses these issues. It finds that while a majority of youths from different backgrounds express animosity toward Japan, they separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese popular culture. In some cases, consumption of Japanese media also allows teenagers to feel that they ‘know’—or even appreciate—the other country better. Amid the anti-Japanese messages currently circulating in PRC schools and domestic media, consumption of Japanese popular culture manifests a form of ‘expressive individualism’ among teenagers, who creatively construct their own notions of patriotism, national memory, and Sino-Japanese relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, China has witnessed the emergence of a psychological discourse of childhood.This new discourse portrays children as persons with unique emotional needs and seeks to redefine childhood as a time of play and relaxation rather than study or toil. Drawing on the results of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai's schools and homes in 2004-2005, the present article describes the complex ways Shanghai's teachers and parents engage with this normalizing, developmental discourse. It argues that the rise of a psychological discourse of childhood signals a shift in Chinese modes of governing school and family life, and in current conceptualizations of the child-as-citizen and the child-as-subject in postsocialist, urban China.