This book introduces Chinese educational reforms and developments rolled out in the year 2014, examining them from both macro and micro perspectives and pursuing a mixed-methods approach. This book depicts the current landscape of the Chinese education system and institutions on different educational levels and in a variety of educational types, covering the development and reform status, issues, causes and effects, strategy plans and trends in the specific areas of schooling, financing, educator development and student development. Based on policy analysis, case studies, surveys and big data analysis, it combines the perspectives of both officials and grass-root stakeholders. Presenting contributions by scholars from over 10 Chinese and international higher education institutions and research institutes, as well as administrators and educators from over 20 provinces and regions throughout the nation, the book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date and solidly fact-based scholarly representation of Chinese education reform and development on the market.

This book examines how educational change has progressed in three contrasting areas spread across China since 1990, exploring key issues concerning rural education in poor, rich and minority areas. Of the three areas covered in this book, the first is a rich one near Beijing; the second is in the northwest in Shanxi on the Loess plateau; and the third is in Sichuan on the high plateau leading to Tibet. Central issues include the impact of large-scale demographic change and migration, with increasing numbers of left-behind children in sending areas, and large increases in the numbers of inbound migrants in receiving areas; dramatic increases in the boarding of children in rural areas as a result of rural school merge; changing patterns of teacher deployment; recentralization of responsibilities for school financing; and growing concerns regarding horizontal and vertical inequalities in both access and participation.

This book focuses on the nature of ethno-national conflicts and impacts of ideological orientation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) towards the national question in the context of Han nationalism and political, economic and security policies towards Xinjiang. Violence in Xinjiang since the mid-1990s is projected as one of the major national security challenges for China, along with issues pertaining to Tibet and Taiwan. The author argues that the post-Mao reformist model may have been a beneficial economic and political innovation, but failed in dealing with regional conflicts and unrests arising out of the demands for independence, freedom, greater autonomy and assertion of democratic and civic rights. The book discusses Chinese nationalism and the construction of Uyghur national identity, consequences of economic modernisation in the region, ethnic conflicts and coercive measures, the security and social stability situation in Xinjiang, intensification of violence in Xinjiang under the new leadership, vision of the ‘Chinese dream’, key policies and programmes, post-riot fallouts and social contradictions manifest in discourses surrounding development, separatist violence, religious fundamentalism and international terrorism. With its in-depth, accessible and comprehensive analyses, this book will be a valuable addition to scholars and researchers of Chinese studies, politics and international relations, security and strategic studies, sociology, social anthropology and ethnic studies.

The Chinese government's education policy in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is significantly reducing the access of ethnic Tibetans to education in their mother tongue. Although the policy claims to promote bilingual education, it is in practice, leading to the gradual replacement of Tibetan by Chinese as the medium of instruction in primary schools throughout the region, except for classes studying Tibetan as a language. This report details how state polices now mean that more primary schools and even kindergartens use Chinese as the teaching language for Tibetan students, and documents the impact on Tibetan families and children. Since the policies were introduced, Tibetans have staged protests against them, and written documents by students, scholars, and others attest to continuing concern about the direction of China's education policies for Tibetans. Human Rights Watch urges the Chinese government to ensure that all Tibetan children can learn in and use Tibetan, to end policies that erode access to mother tongue education, and to end repression of peaceful activism in support of language rights.