The post-Mao period has witnessed rapid social and economic transformation in all walks of Chinese life - much of it fuelled by, or reflected in, changes to the country's education system. This book analyses the development of that system since the abandonment of radical Maoism and the inauguration of 'Reform and Opening' in the late 1970s.

The principal focus is on formal education in schools and conventional institutions of tertiary education, but there is also some discussion of preschools, vocational training, and learning in non-formal contexts. The book begins with a...

The Sino-Japanese War (1937 1945) was fought in the Asia-Pacific theatre between Imperial Japan and China, with the United States as the latter s major military ally. An important line of investigation remains, questioning how the history of this war has been passed on to post-war generations consciousness, and how information sources, particularly those exposed to young people in their formative years, shape their knowledge and bias of the conflict as well as World War II more generally.

This book is the first to focus on how the Sino-Japanese War has been represented in...

In many non-Western contexts, modernization has tended to be equated with Westernization, and hence with an abandonment of authentic indigenous identities and values. This is evident in the recent history of many Asian societies, where efforts to modernize – spurred on by the spectre of foreign domination – have often been accompanied by determined attempts to stamp national variants of modernity with the brand of local authenticity: ‘Asian values’, ‘Chinese characteristics’, a Japanese cultural ‘essence’ and so forth. Highlighting (or exaggerating) associations between the...