Like other colonial state structures, the education system in China aims to manufacture regime loyalty and cultural conformity among its 125 million minority nationalities. The Party-state's lessons in 'being Chinese' begin by nullifying traditional languages, cultures and lifestyles, which are deemed primitive and uncouth, and then remould…

This article provides an overview of the politics of education as they affect regions and communities on the periphery of the People's Republic of China. Drawing on the articles in this special issue of Comparative Education, it analyses tensions related to the attempted imposition of Bejing's homogenising and totalising vision of Chineseness…

This article offers a theoretical intervention in new and emergent approaches to analysing China's coercive nation-building policies under Xi Jinping. The author contends that the recent Western framing of CCP policies as genocidal or necropolitical, predicated on notions of settler colonialism and indigeneity, not only strips minority…

With early childhood inhabiting a firm position on policy agendas, an emerging global consensus acknowledges the need for research into early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems. However, standardised approaches to comparison dominate the field. These studies tend to be grounded in methodological nationalism, assuming nation states as the…

This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by…

In this study, we discuss the Confucian tradition in today's multicultural China from two perspectives: that of the mandatory school curriculum, which represents 'official knowledge', and that of students from ethnic minority and/or religious backgrounds who are located on the cultural margins in China. The analysis draws on curricular narratives…

This study explores what it means to be Korean as seen in North and South Korean elementary school textbooks. Mass schooling transforms students into national citizens belonging to specific nation-states, an exercise particularly important for both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea. To gain insight into how these…

This article analyses the implications of recent policy changes for the portrayal of minority nationalities in the latest China's history textbooks published around 2017. We argue that ideological responses to the fierce ethnic clashes of the late 2000s and the leadership transition since 2012 have generated increasingly contradictory official…

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI.…

Why have regimes and societies that would otherwise argue for their distinctiveness and sovereign decision-making caught 'ranking fever' in HE? Why are they willing to give up their sovereignty in the field of HE, and why do they accept the requirement of homogeneity to succeed in global university rankings? This paradox is explored in the case of…

This article discusses the 'Indianisation', 'nationalisation', and 'ruralisation' of the Montessori method in India at the eve, and in the aftermath of the country's political independence (1947). From 1914 onwards, Indian nationalists received Montessori's ideas through publications, the networks of the new education movement, and the…

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of…

Whilst Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has influenced education in various ways, major reforms perceived as promoting mainland control have been resisted. For two decades, Hong Kong's educational autonomy under the 'one country, two systems' formula was thus largely maintained. This changed radically with the response to the…

This article illustrates and discusses some elements of the "problematique" 'Southern Europe'. The themes stressed include its configuration and the criteria for its conceptualisation. A number of ways to think about 'Southern Europe are discussed -- of course with particular emphasis on the development and theoretical elaboration of…

Despite the widespread education reform discourses attempting to alleviate high-stakes examination pressure and narrowly test-driven education systems in East Asia, none have been as systematic and drastic as the Free Year Program (FYP) recently implemented in South Korea. The FYP provides middle school students with a year-long reprieve from…