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As China's educational policy and reforms continue to evolve and adjust to shifting social, economic, and political conditions, this chapter provides a template for conceptually framing education research on and in China. To do so this chapter first identifies focus areas in comparative education research related to China, which reflect researcher perspective, perceived advantage, and demonstrated resistance to these educational policy reforms. The authors develop a conceptual framework for comparatively understanding education research on and in China, which focuses on the intersection of comparative education themes, institutional change agents or methods, and Chinese educational reform topics. This conceptual framework specifically accounts for overlap, complexity, and the evolving nature of educational policy reform in China. This chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of comparative education researchers, national policymakers, and consumers of the research using new data and methods as they become available to continue to revise understandings of Chinese educational policy and reform.

Some studies have claimed that Chinese thinker Hu Shi (or Hu Shih) received and responded to John Dewey's educational ideas only at a theoretical level and did little for education at a practical level. This paper reexamines Hu's reception of Dewey's ideas with a focus on how he used those ideas to solve China's educational and social problems during the late 1910s and 1920s.

This paper draws upon what Schriewer (2012) has called “theories of reception.” Rather than focusing on the international dissemination of ideas and knowledge, this approach emphasizes the reception of foreign ideas from the perspective and needs of the receiver, interpreter and/or reader who apprehends such ideas within a particular socio–cultural context.

This paper finds that Hu not only received — and examined — Dewey's educational ideas in a systematic way, but also used them pragmatically to reform China's systems of education as part of the New Culture Movement after 1919.

This research offers a new understanding of Hu's reception of Dewey's educational ideas. It shows that Hu was not merely a “thinker” in the field of education but also a “doer” who sought to apply Dewey's ideas in practice. This new view allows us to reevaluate Hu's role in the modernization of Chinese education.

Tingting Qi's chapter titled, “Moving toward Decentralization? Changing Education Governance in China After 1985,” provides the historical and policy context for the volume. This chapter integrates the post-1978 Chinese educational reforms into the socioeconomic context of China. The special contribution of this chapter is that it explores the complexity of educational decentralization in China through an in-depth analysis of changes in education finance, administration, and curriculum. Qi reviews prior studies, government documents, laws, and regulations related to Chinese education reform since 1978 within the context of education decentralization in China. Qi also demonstrates that China's educational policy reforms are moving China toward “centralized decentralization” because decentralization is driven by a common, centralized national goal of economic modernization. The chapter presents evidence that “centralized decentralization” is a strategic maneuver that maintains centralized control while providing the reform legitimacy of decentralization. By focusing on decentralization as the core of Chinese educational policy reforms, this chapter situates the following chapters within the social, cultural, and political context of post-1978 China.

The purpose of this paper is to review the major systemic educational reforms that China has undertaken over the past three decades and analyze the reasons behind their different degrees of success.

Two running themes are identified among various reforms on the Chinese educational system: decentralization and marketization. The authors explore the driving forces behind these reforms and discuss whether the reforms were successful or not.

In conclusion, the authors highlight four takeaway lessons of Chinese educational reforms.

This is an original discussion of educational reforms in China in the contexts of decentralization and marketization.

China’s educational leaders have long debated the pluses and minuses of decentralization of control and resources of China’s vast educational enterprise. During various periods of post‐1949 China, the central authorities have devolved control to the provinces, key cities, and rural communes, only to recentralize later usually due to political reforms. In this chapter various stages of the educational reform movement begun in 1985 will be considered and we will focus on what motivated the reforms in the context of China’s unique political culture. Some specific features of educational decentralization will be examined such as finance, curriculum and management. We conclude that while the current leadership appears to be committed to decentralization, they remain conflicted over the need to maintain control while at the same time respond creatively to the needs of the new market economy.

Purpose: Premarital cohabitation has increased dramatically in China in the last few decades. Past studies have suggested that education is positively associated with premarital cohabitation in China, but how this association changes over time when cohabitation grows from a marginal phenomenon to a popular choice remains unknown. This chapter investigates the changes in the association between education and premarital cohabitation among married individuals in post-reform China.

Design/methodology/approach: Using pooled data from the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2016), logistic regressions are carried out to compare the association between education and premarital cohabitation across three marriage cohorts: 1981–1992, 1993–2001, and 2002–2016.

Findings: Results show that opposite to trends in many Western countries, the positive association between education and premarital cohabitation has not decreased but instead strengthened over time in China. This trend is more consistent for women than men.

Research limitations/implications: The pathways through which education influences cohabitation have not been examined. Moreover, the scope of this research is limited to married individuals and does not include cohabiting experiences that do not lead to marriage. Future research may address this issue when such data become available.

Originality/value: This chapter for the first time examines how the association between education and premarital cohabitation changes over time across different marriage cohorts and whether the diffusion process has happened like what has been observed in Western countries. The findings suggest that China is developing different patterns and trends of demographic changes because of its unique institutional and cultural context.

This chapter begins with an examination of the complexities, challenges, and contradictions that are presented by policies and practices associated with the College Entrance Examination (CEE) and higher education admissions during the three decades of China's reform era. It then focuses on recent reform polices as outlined in the national education 2020 Blueprint (National Educational Reform and Development Plan, 2010–2020), which deepens the debate about the role of the CEE in shaping the mission of education and distributing opportunities and “talents” affecting social mobility, university autonomy, and national development. The CEE stands at the epicenter of educational reform, criticized for hamstringing institutional autonomy and innovation; reducing schooling to a soulless competition; and unfairly advantaging urban children with greater educational opportunities. This chapter explains the staying power of the CEE and concludes that China's examination culture will intensify in the short term, as the CEE is clung to as a last bastion of meritocracy and is reinforced by the state's desire to cultivate what the 2020 Blueprint labels elite “selected innovative” and “pragmatic” talents. Content and policy analysis is used to explain CEE reform since 1978 and provide a backdrop for discussion of pedagogical, market, and compensatory reform strategies that tinker at the CEE's margins. To take into account micro-institutional processes involved in the CEE's creation, maintenance, and resistance to change, we examine stakeholders' frames of common perception through 2010 interviews with exam candidates and their parents, and faculty and administrators from four Gansu Province universities. These interviews illustrate what the CEE means to diverse families and reveal how admission policies impact students, teachers, and university faculty and administrators at both elite and non-elite higher education institutions. The slow change of CEE reform discourse and practice as China inches from examination-based selection criteria to ability-based selection criteria has begun to redefine the trajectories of recognized “elites,” whose actions are motivated by and reflect the changing needs of society and economic development. Friction and resistance on the ground, therefore, point to the ways in which the changing needs of the labor market, the policy mandates of the national agenda, the meritocratic ideal and the educational desires of China's citizenry intertwine to shape, and be shaped by, CEE policies.

In the 1980s, the Chinese government undertook a major structural reform in education by which upper secondary education was converted from predominantly general education to an equal mix of general education and vocational/technical education. A critical examination is provided of the rationale for and implementation strategies of the reform, framed in a broader context of the development of secondary education in the past four decades. It points out that, although the reform was justified in largely economic terms, there is actually little empirical support for the economic assumptions; the development of vocational/technical education is prompted more by a desire to reduce the social demand for higher education and to use education as a social stratification device. The reform reflects changing perspectives of the Chinese leadership on the role of education in national development; and it can be seen as the outcome of the most recent episode of continuing social and political conflicts in the Chinese state that began in the 1950s.

By reviewing the related literature on the Jiaoshi Pinren Zhi (JPZ) system, this paper seeks to indicate that the implementation of JPZ not only has led to domestic brain drain and the imbalance of teachers' qualities between different areas and schools, but also has violated children's equal rights to education guaranteed by the Constitution and educational laws in PR China.

By analysing national policies and laws and some cases, the paper points out that the reforms on teachers' employment causes the imbalance of teachers' qualities between different areas and schools and it is against the principle of children's equal rights to education guaranteed by the Constitution and some educational laws in China.

Since the late 1980s, many reform initiatives have been launched in the context of the transition from planned economy to market economy in China.

The reforms on the teachers' employment system from “Tongyi Fenpei” (TF, a system of unified placement for all graduates) and the life‐time employment system to JPZ (a free contract employment system) is one of the important reform initiatives.

This chapter integrates current Chinese education reform into the unique socioeconomic context of China in a transitional time and explores the complexity of education decentralization in China through an in-depth analysis on changes in education finance, administration, and curriculum development. Mark Hanson's theory of education decentralization is cited to build a conceptual framework for examining education decentralization in China. Previous studies, government documents, laws, and regulations related to the current wave of Chinese education reform are reviewed to capture a true picture of education decentralization in China. In investigating the background, actual actions, and motive of the current Chinese education reform, the chapter demonstrates that the on-going Chinese education reform is moving toward a centralized decentralization. Linking education with the unified national goal of economic modernization, the paradoxical mixture of centralization and decentralization is a strategic means to avoid loss of centralized control. Literature on decentralization reform in Chinese education primarily concentrates on changed Chinese education policies in the reform. This chapter places the focus on the contextual factors that shape the decentralization trend in current reform.