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In China, it is the continuation of citizenship education in primary schools, which lays the foundation for citizenship education in senior high schools. So the authors have chosen citizenship education at the junior high schools stage in mainland China as the purpose of this paper is to provide answers to three research questions: (1) is ideological and moral education citizenship education at junior high schools in China? (2) What is the content of citizenship education at junior high schools in China? (3) What are the characteristics of citizenship education at junior high schools in China?

This paper adopts the methods of literature review and text analysis. Text analysis means that researchers must study from the surface to the depths of a text and grasp the profound meaning which cannot be found otherwise by general readers. Of course, there are many modes of text analysis. Here, we mainly adopt intertextuality and dialogue analysis modes to understand citizenship education and its characteristics from the Ideology and Morality textbooks. The analysis of the textbooks has been carried out from three perspectives (i.e. the concepts, contents and teaching methods of citizenship education), where the focus is on the analysis of the textbook content. Through literature review, this study presents a critique of the definitions, and of analogous and conflicting ideas, to provide answers to research questions RQ1 and RQ2. Because of the authority and representativeness of the Ideology and Morality textbooks in citizenship education studies at the relevant stage in mainland China, they are chosen and are subject to text analysis from three perspectives (i.e. the concept, content and teaching method of citizenship education), to answer RQ3. The paper’s argument is built on an appropriate base of theory and concepts.

Through a textual analysis of Ideology and Morality for junior high schools in China, we can report the following findings: First, the junior high school ideological and moral course is citizenship education with Chinese characteristics. Second, the contents of citizenship education in junior high schools in China include the identification of the Chinese state and nation, the enhancement of citizenship education based upon the unity of right and obligations, and the importance of the contents and requirements of such civic knowledge as a means for public consciousness education. Third, the methods involve classroom instruction and the participation in practical activities.

The Ideology and Morality course in junior high schools in China is representative of a citizenship education that has Chinese characteristics. The citizenship education at this stage is peculiar, but its construction is far from perfect. Besides, this special form of education is now facing challenges from burgeoning nationalism and globalization, which is creating pressure for the improvement of the theories of citizenship education presented in this period, the standardization of its content and the change of its methods of delivery. This paper sheds light on this issue to some extent.

This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension.

The four articles in this special issue present citizen-making processes in both educational and cultural arenas. Based on the rich, first-hand data collected inside and outside China, the researchers revealed the dynamics of the educative processes, as the interplay of different mechanisms produces new understandings of citizenship practice.

This special issue sheds light on the rise of new types of citizens, who are emerging at the grassroots level in China, beyond the state’s strict direct regulations, along with the rise of market forces and multicultural communities in Chinese society today. Contributors to this special issue have captured an ongoing change, in that the diversified citizen-making mechanisms are, to a certain extent, mitigating the party-state’s definitive monopoly on forging citizens and are creating new spaces for individuals to develop fresh forms of political subjectivity and citizenship practice. In this sense, we argue for the unpacking of the citizen-making processes in present-day China not only from the lens of state-dominated, top-down initiatives but also from that of participatory, bottom-up initiatives performed by grassroots groups with differentiated socio-economic statuses and cultural traditions.

This special issue can be regarded as a contribution to the growing field of Chinese citizenship studies, which constitutes an integral part of the unfinished project of citizenship after orientalism.

Hong Kong is a case that demonstrates the distinctively multi-dimensional nature of citizenship within and in relation to a given nation. The purposes of this paper are to: first, discuss Hong Kongers’ unique identity and the influence of political, historical and economic factors on them in order to show the value of challenging the “national citizenship” approach as a dominant discourse in the intended curriculum of Hong Kong citizenship education; second, analyze the efforts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to foster a stronger sense of Chinese national identity in Hong Kong students; and third, evaluate the appropriateness of this nationalistic approach by examining its compatibility with and coherence to in relation to the implemented and attained curriculum.

This study analyzes existing scholarly discussions on the PRC’s emphasis on Chinese national identity in citizenship education and negative perceptions held by teachers and students regarding the approach and presentation of their actual teaching and learning practices for citizenship education with empirical data.

This paper illuminates the mismatch found between the intended curriculum and the implemented and attained curriculum in terms of the viewpoints of good citizens.

The notion of “cultural citizenship” is suggested as an alternative approach to developing the curriculum of Hong Kong citizenship education. This paper will be of interest to those curriculum scholars, educational authorities and teachers who are interested in developing and implementing the curriculum of citizenship education.

This study examines education for sustainability (EfS) within the Chinese context, to specifically enrich the understanding on how EfS is structured and implemented to nurture citizenship in the policy practices of universities in Mainland China and Hong Kong.

A cross-case analysis is recruited to examine the commonalities and differences between two universities and identify patterns in cultivating sustainability citizenship within higher education institutions (HEIs) in China. Data were collected through reviewing documents, including two universities’ strategic plans, action plans, department meeting memos, program introductions, course outlines and publicity coverage. Observation was also adopted to enrich the data for analysis, covering meetings, speeches by senior management, university events and informal conversations about university operations.

Citizenship and sustainability in university strategic planning, curriculum and instruction, carriers of EfS institutionalization, and resources and impacts of EfS beyond the institutes were analyzed in a comparative manner, offering valuable insights into how EfS can be institutionalized in different universities based on their unique appeals, existing curriculum and management systems.

By exploring these intra-national distinctions in EfS, the study sheds light on the variation within China's citizenship education, which is traditionally seen as highly unified with limited room for differences. The detailed exploration of university strategies and program/course content enriches the literature of sustainability as an educational phenomenon on an international scale and modernized citizenship education in China.

This paper aims to explore Chinese female international students’ construction of global citizenship identity by examining their accumulation of cultural capital in different forms from transnational higher education in the UK.

Participant observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese female international students at a British university to explore their experiences with transnational higher education, cultural identities, the construction of global citizenship and perceived future job opportunities.

In this research, participants revealed that accessing a global elite university helps them accumulate institutionalised cultural capital. Embodied cultural cultivation acquired from transnational higher education is justified by students’ experiences in the context of transnational higher education. Rising confidence is shown by the participants’ narration and global-oriented awareness, which is their ability to understand and respect people from diverse cultural backgrounds, which was developed during their studies in the UK. However, they still realise the potentially difficult conversion of cultural capital to real job competitiveness. Recognition of global citizenship identity may be complicated if students plan to return home after studying.

This study provides further insight into the single-child generation of globally mobile Chinese female international students. Participants were aware of the positive accumulation of cultural capital in its embodied and institutionalised forms obtained from the UK higher education system and its contribution to the construction of global citizenship identity. However, the newly constructed global citizenship identity remains complex. Participants question the extent to which the new identity fits into the Chinese social context if they decide to return home.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the originality of the paper lies in expanding the global citizenship framework with the specific application of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to show Chinese female international students’ study experiences in UK transnational higher education, rather than addressing the Chinese international student experience in general.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the curriculum developments of civic education in three emerging Chinese societies: China and two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, which are increasingly under the impacts of globalisation in this information world.

The analytical method is used and the following are identified: active and global civic education-related learning units and key themes and main contents in official curriculum guidelines and updated textbooks related to civic education.

A major finding is that elements of both active and global citizenship, such as participation in the community and understanding about the world and thus forming multiple identities, can be found alongside their emphasis on enhancing national citizenship. Thus, ideas of global citizenship and multiple levels of citizenship from local, national to global start to develop in these three Chinese societies.

The implications of such findings of both active and global citizenship, as well as multiple identities, found in these three Chinese societies could be huge for informing civic literature and sociological point of views, in particular, pointing to the next generations receiving a broadened and transcended notion of multiple levels of citizenship, apart from local and national citizenship.

The significance of this paper is that it argues that ideas of active citizenship in terms of community participation and global citizenship have been found in China, Hong Kong and Macao civic education curriculum and textbooks because of the expectations placed on students to compete in a globalized world, though national citizenship and patriotic concerns have been primary concerns. Globalisation makes the world society by impacting on these three Chinese societies for active and global citizenship, though they still retain their particular curricular focusses.

There is widespread debate about the nationalistic top-down approach of citizenship education. By using the notion of cultural citizenship as a useful theoretical lens, citizenship education research tends to focus on the process of subjectivity construction among students’ citizenship learning process. The Communist Party of China plays a dominant role in cultivating citizens in the form of ideological and political education (IaPE) in Chinese universities. The research problem thus focuses on the dynamics and complexity of how Chinese university students construct their subjectivities regarding citizenship learning through IaPE. The main purpose of the study is to provide some research directions for understanding students’ citizenship learning today.

With the case study of one university in China and interview data from 25 students, this paper examines the ways in which students understand and respond to dominant discourses.

The findings revealed there is a deficit of citizenship learning in IaPE, and students felt ideologically pressurized. This study suggests students’ complex subjectivities of active participants but confused minds as a phenomenon in Chinese higher education, in which they must involve in IaPE for personal academic and career development, while they adopted covert strategies for self-conscious citizenship learning expectations. These strategies took the form ranging from obediently completing basic curriculum requirements and distancing away by studying abroad, to actively searching for learning opportunities from other courses and media society.

This paper contributes to citizenship education research by recognizing the complexities of how subjectivities are formed in formal university settings.

This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector.

In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures.

The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development.

This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China.

The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China.

This qualitative multiple-case study research attempts to examine controversies associated with national education and national identity by exploring the perceptions of national identity of Hong Kong secondary school teachers. Since the resumption of Hong Kong's sovereignty by China in 1997, national identification with Chinese has been a policy priority. Hong Kong has seen an increase of national education, which aims at cultivating a Chinese national identity.

The study was conducted with case study method with a convenient sampling method on ten purposively chosen sample of Hong Kong secondary school teachers, who are responsible for citizenship education in their schools. It is a qualitative research design with each teacher interviewed twice to obtain in-depth interview data.

The findings reveal that teachers perceive their national identity with different emphases, which include both elements of civic and ethnic nationalism. Also, Hong Kong teachers showed a diversified perception of their national identity both before and after 1997, and it was found that political, social and personal events exerted influences upon their national identification. These have implication for understanding identity issue and teaching citizenship education in Hong Kong.

This paper attempts to make a contribution towards understanding teachers’ perceptions of national identity by revealing that Hong Kong teachers perceive their national identity with both elements of civic and ethnic nationalism, and their perceptions are mediated by political, social and personal events. Furthermore, multiple levels of identities, namely, local, national, and global levels, should be observed.

After the handing over of Hong Kong sovereignty from 1997 and under the “one country two systems” model, the Special Administrative Region's Government initiated new policies of civic education and amended or ignored the old ones. However, it was not until May 2011 that the complete new policy paper was introduced for consultation and then it was passed and issued as national education in April 2012. This article aims to analyze the civic education policy of Hong Kong in the transfer of power after the handing over in the following 15 years.

This policy analysis describes the preparations for Hong Kong’s future citizens and masters. Theories of citizenship education are adopted for this analysis. Moreover, theories of the state are also applied for more in‐depth understanding. These concepts are helpful to operationalize the contents of the study. It was a historical and comparative method to help to understand and explain the civic education policy of the HKSAR's governance.

Basically, it can be seen that the policies are anticipatory and responsive. The historical context of Hong Kong helped to make the correspondence with how the government expected to mold its future citizens in order to facilitate and implement their administration and governance.

This paper explores the role of the Hong Kong Government in the initiation and implementation of civic education.