Globalization and Chinese Education in the Early 20th Century

• Published in: Frontiers of Education in China 2013, Vol.8 (3), p.398-419
• Main Author: Bailey, Paul J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: China; Chinese educational lobby; Educational Change; Educational History; Educational Innovation; educational press; educational reform; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; Global economy; Globalization; International Cooperation; International education; Lobbying; nation-building; Periodicals; Teachers
• ISSN: 1673-341X; 1673-3533
• DOI: 10.3868/s110-002-013-0026-4

With China’s growing significance in the global economy ever more evident, studies in recent years have highlighted multiple aspects of China’s “Globalization” (or global connections) that predate the contemporary period. This article focuses on educational reform in the late Qing and early Republic as a way of illuminating a significant aspect of China’s Globalization during this period. In particular, the article highlights the role of an emerging Chinese educational “lobby” that was involved in administration, teaching, and textbook compilation; furthermore, this lobby pioneered the introduction of new ideas, concepts, and innovative practice from abroad in the specialized journals on education—the first of their kind in China—which they edited and contributed to. More significantly, contributors to these journals engaged with and discussed educational issues and problems that were simultaneously being debated in the West. In the process Chinese educators and officials were able to draw upon, either to valorize or critique, a wide spectrum of contemporary foreign educational debate and practice in their prognosis of domestic education and its future. The picture that emerges of Chinese education during this period is one in which Chinese educators perceived themselves very much as active participants in a global educational community.