Shaping personal worldviews when neo-liberalism meets Confucianism and patriotism: insights from Chinese postgraduate students.

This study examines how Chinese postgraduate students' personal worldviews are separately and collectively shaped by the interplay of neoliberalism, Confucianism and patriotism. The findings reveal that neoliberalism contributes to Chinese postgraduates' enterprising self by shaping their subjectivity in pursuing personal goals, influencing their thinking with the market logics of efficiency, effectiveness and -quantifiable outcomes, and leaving them with a predisposition toward deregulation. Confucianism prompts the postgraduates to self-strengthen at the individual level and guides them with interaction norms at the interpersonal level. Patriotism underpins the postgraduates' psychological and emotional power based on strengthened memories of historical events and pride in national achievements, thereby generating a deep-seated collective identity. Counteracting and consolidating forces are identified based on the interplay of the three isms, resulting in the Chinese postgraduates' partial individualization. The partial individualization reflected in today's Chinese postgraduates features a consistent rather than divisible dual-self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]