The discrepancy of meaning of citizenship between the state and society in China: Implications for citizenship education and policymaking

Citizenship: rights, responsibilities, and participation

Heater (1999) argues that citizenship has two political traditions, the liberal and the civic republican. The liberal tradition sees citizens as individual bearers of rights, while the civic republican one treats citizens as responsible members of community.

On the liberal tradition side, Heater (1999) points out that citizens’ rights “have the prospect of being added to” and “should have the expected complement of duties” (p. 29). On one hand, besides Marshall’s (1992) classic clarification of civil, political, and social rights, in recent years, the discussion of cultural rights of ethnic minorities is seen as “the fourth wave of citizenship rights” (Norman and Kymlicka, 2005: 218). On the other hand, besides obligations such as paying tax that are deemed necessary for the protection of individuals’ rights by the state in return, citizens’ participation such as monitoring government is required by the tenets of liberal virtue to prevent abuse of freedom, the essence of liberalism (Heater, 1999).

On the civic republican side of citizenship, citizens’ involvement in public affairs is also stressed. But for civic republicans, the advocacy is not for the purpose of protecting individual freedom and rights as the liberals argue, but for the reasons that an organic society is “not merely a collection of individuals” and that citizens as its members have responsibilities to participate in it for “the mutual benefit of the individual and the community” (Heater, 1999: 44–55).

Citizenship in China ideologically follows neither the liberal tradition nor the classic civic republican one, but takes the socialist or communist path which is extended from the republican theory. In the ideal communist society with abundant resources “[f]rom each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Marx and Engels, 1968: 321), people spontaneously participate in society for the collective good without claim for rights or burden of responsibilities; but at the preliminary stage of communism, or socialism, a full range of state intervention led by communist party in society is deemed necessary by Marxists. Thus, in the socialist China, the party-state is expected to play the watchful and guiding role in citizenship. Yet as the policy shift from a planned to a market economy, in return for ruling legitimacy, has become entrenched in China since the 1980s, the socialist or communist ideology is challenged by market-oriented or capitalist values such as individualism, raising prospects of liberalization and democratization in China.

Amid the tension between communist ideology and capitalized economy, this study focuses on rights, responsibilities, and participation of citizenship suggested by Heater’s (1999) two traditions, examining to what extent the three aspects are expressed by the state and in society in China. Before turning to the methodology of the study, two questions need to be considered: what is the status of the three aspects in official citizenship-related education and how are Chinese citizens’ citizenship consciousness and practice?

Citizenship-related education in China

As highlighted above, ideological, political and moral educations are the three interrelated substitutes for citizenship education in China. While they are all closely related to citizenship education, this should not obscure the fact that citizenship itself is not a curriculum subject in contemporary China. It thus may be more appropriate to refer to them as “citizenship-related education” or directly as what Lee and Ho (2008) termed “ideopolitical-moral education”. By tracing the changes that have taken place in educational policies and curriculum documents since the 1990s, Lee and Ho (2008) found that ideological and political educations have been on the decline while moral education is prominently elevated. They argued that citizenship-related education in China features depoliticization and predominance of morality at the turn to 21st-century (Lee and Ho, 2008).

It is in moral education that “citizenship” has been pronounced recently. In 2001, the Central Committee of the CCP published a document “Guideline for Improving Citizens’ Morality,” which is seen as evidence of the formal introduction of the concept of citizenship into Chinese political and educational discourse (Li et al., 2004; Tse, 2011). In the guideline, ten virtues ranging from law-abiding to patriotism are listed as national ethical code of conduct (Central Committee of the CCP, 2001). These virtues, as Tse (2011) analyzed, are faithfully reflected in the current 2005 version of moral education textbooks for Grade 7–9. Moreover, Tse (2011) found in the current version of textbooks “a salient recognition of self or individual” besides intact patriotism and collectivism (p. 167). By comparing the 1997 and 2005 versions of textbooks, Tse (2011) exposed that while the articulation of citizens’ active contribution to the country and society that were prevailed in the old version remains explicit in the new one, the latter begins to encourage students to be aware of taking part in national governance as their rights and responsibilities. Tse (2011) argued that moral education is gradually shifting from “ideological–political indoctrination” toward “a relaxed notion of citizenship” that increasingly emphasizes on individual rights (p. 177).

Yet, while citizens’ rights are emphasized, they are taught in the subject of moral education. It renders rights inferior to citizens’ morality and responsibilities. Moreover, we need to keep in mind that socialism and the leadership of the CCP are the premise of any kind of policymaking in China. However depoliticized and pronounced citizenship is under the veil of moral education, it bears political and ideological purposes because it is a political concept. Evidence is that in the abovementioned guideline, loyalty to socialism is part of the basic requirement for citizens’ morality and socialist morality is treated as “the highest stage of morality” (Li et al., 2004: 458).

Moral education is at most a necessary but not sufficient constituent of citizenship education. Discussing citizenship merely in moral education obscures the potentials of promoting citizenship education that pays equal attentions to rights and responsibilities and develops citizenship practice. Jumping out from moral education, this study explores the meaning of citizenship in terms of rights, responsibilities, and participation respectively to search for the potentials.

Chinese citizens’ citizenship consciousness and practice

Wan (2004) observed that the policy of openness and reform, together with the construction of social democracy and a law system, has raised Chinese people’s citizenship consciousness. But he also admitted that “people’s citizenship consciousness is still unclear, and their understanding of citizenship remains narrow” (Wan, 2004: 356).

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that citizens’ rights consciousness has been substantially developed in the past decades. By demonstrating ordinary citizens’ political struggles in China in the last two decades of the 20th-century, Goldman (2005) pointed out that a major change in the period is “a growing sense of rights consciousness, particularly of political rights,” and that “[i]nitially articulated by intellectuals, this rights consciousness gradually spreads to the population in general—workers, peasants, the growing middle class, and religious believers” (p. 2). But having rights consciousness does not necessarily mean that all rights are equally weighted at all times. Daniel Bell (2006) offered a cultural account on the prioritizing of rights, discussing that influenced by Chinese traditional values, “the Chinese may be more willing to sacrifice a civil or political liberty in cases of clash with a social or economic right” (p. 61).

Goldman (2005) illustrated the growing and spreading rights consciousness by her careful observation of Chinese citizens’ desires for and attempts of active political participation. For different groups of ordinary citizens, the demand for political participation, however, may vary. Xia’s (2011) study in relation to political participation conducted between 1992 and 1994 discovered that the younger cohorts coming of age since the 1978 Reform and Openness have stronger demand for political participation than those grew up a decade ago during the socialism peak times and the Cultural Revolution. Xia (2011) attributed the difference to the awakening rights consciousness and the emerging perception of political participation as individual right in the younger cohorts’ eyes, which is distinct from the perception of political participation as collective right with individual duty, as those growing up in the 1960s were taught. That study also found that people in interior economic-undeveloped rural areas tend to desire for political participation more than their coastal economic-developed rural counterparts: Xia (2011) reasoned that the less people have, the more they desire.

Although some groups are found to have stronger demand for political participation than others, Xia’s (2011) study revealed that comparing with salient rights consciousness, there seems to be political apathy among citizens in general. Similarly, a recent study on university students’ civic perceptions and civic participation conducted by Tu (2011) suggested that although university students generally have positive civic attitudes, they tend to act passively. Indeed, neither the demand for the right to political participation nor the adoption of positive civic attitudes guarantees citizens’ active participation. Tu (2011) attributed the lack of active participation to traditional and socialist values, as well as the limitations of citizenship-related education, while Xia (2011) blamed it on the lack of institutional resource and people’s failure of fulfilling moral responsibilities to society.

Lee and Ho (2008) observed that “[m]oral decline” is a general perception among the public in post-modern China,” including the decline of family ethics, social ethics, and collectivism, among others (p. 141). Yet opinions on what resulted in it are divided. On one hand, questioning the role of free market in modernity, the New Left claims that it is free competition and materialization entailed by the primacy of economy that leads to selfishness and collapse of collectivism. On the other hand, as Goldman (2005) highlighted there are also intellectuals such as He Qinglian arguing that rather than market-oriented economy, the main reason for moral decline is authoritarian practices during primitive accumulation that weakened social regulation and fairness. Besides, there are also arguments that the value change from once dominant collectivism to emerged market-driven individualism is hardly “moral decline,” but actually positive response to the market economy and necessary condition for building democracy (Ding, 2001).

The studies and perspectives reviewed above help comprehend the understanding of Chinese people’s rights and responsibilities consciousness and citizenship practice in contemporary Chinese society. They imply that the meaning of citizenship in society is neither static nor unitary but depending upon cultural and ideological factors and varying between different social groups. As voices from society have increasing influence on policymaking of the state, this study focused on the prevailing perspective on citizenship in society, which cannot be ignored when the state is promoting citizenship education.

Sampling

The media is influenced by and serves to maintain dominant power through the control of knowledge and information (Donohue et al., 1973). It implies that the prevailing perspective on citizenship in society and within the CCP can be mirrored through the use of gongmin, the Chinese term for citizen or citizenship, in newspapers. While media in China is still under state censorship, it has been dramatically marketized and become much more reflective of interests of consumers and society (Tang, 2005). As Guo (2010) pointed out, one of the noticeable changes in newspapers in China in the first decade of the 21st-century is that “they have started to epitomize the contemporary Chinese society as a whole, which, though still dominated by government, has become more diverse in its power structure” (p. 45).

Southern Metropolis Daily (Nanfang dushibao) is one of the newspapers that emerged amid the change. Established in 1997, it is described by Goldman as an “outspoken” newspaper under the Guangzhou-based Southern Newspaper Media Group which is “daring” to express public opinion even if contradicting the state (Goldman, 2005: 187–225). Moreover, it exceptionally declares the aim to raise citizenship consciousness and has the largest circulation among daily newspapers in Guangdong Province (“About Southern Metropolis Daily,” 2007). For these reasons, I chose the newspaper as the sample to examine the meaning of citizenship in society.

The People’s Daily (Renmin ribao) is the prime mouthpiece of the CCP and was chosen to reflect state perspectives on the meaning of citizenship. There are factions within the CCP (Zheng, 2006), and they may have different interests and hence standpoints in policymaking. The newspaper nonetheless can reflect the dominant perspective within the CCP.

Data collection and analysis

The examined period started in October 2007 when the need of citizenship education was remarkably stressed by the CCP and ended in August 2010. Specifically in Southern Metropolis Daily, I only targeted the Page-A part which was published provincewide, ruling out those pages that were published exclusively in individual cities. I accessed to People’s Daily by its published CD-Rom database and to Southern Metropolis Daily via both its online version and hard copies in library. Articles in which the term gongmin appeared were collected. At last, I collected a total of 5001 articles meeting the conditions, among which 2744 were from the CCP organ newspaper and 2257 from the regional one.

As the study aimed to examine the meaning of citizenship in terms of rights, responsibilities, and participation, Chinese terms that served as indicators in the content analysis included (1) quanli and quanyi (rights); (2) yiwu (obligation), daode (morality) and zeren (responsibility); and (3) canjia and canyu (participation). Specifically, rights were categorized into civil, political, social and cultural, responsibilities into moral and legal, and participation into political and non-political. Krippendorff (1980) suggested that because content analysis is a quantitative as well as qualitative research method, both explicit and latent meanings need to be taken into account. For this reason, first, I analyzed whether each gongmin in each article was in positive semantic connection with the indicators, no matter explicitly or latently; if so, I further categorized the connected rights, responsibilities, and participation.

The recording and analyzing proceeded on SPSS Version 19. Each article was treated as a case; each category in the three aspects of rights, responsibilities, and participation was set as a variable. After recording the results of content analysis, frequencies of the variables were calculated and compared in and between newspapers. At last, Chi-square tests were run to measure the significance of difference of the frequencies between the two newspapers. To avoid Type I error, differences were considered at the rigorous .001 level.

The discrepancy of meaning of citizenship between the state and society

As Table 1 shows, there were proportional differences in the three aspects of citizenship between the two newspapers. Compared with Southern Metropolis Daily, People’s Daily was found to have fewer articles containing gongmin in connection with rights (37.0% vs 27.0%) but more articles in which gongmin was connected with responsibilities (8.2% vs 18.5%) and participation (9.5% vs 14.0%).

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Table 1.

Percentage of articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with rights, responsibilities, and participation in the two newspapers.

	Rights	Responsibilities	Participation
People’s Daily (n = 2744)	27.0	18.5	14.0
Southern Metropolis Daily (n = 2257)	37.0	8.2	9.5

The differences are all statistically significant (Table 2). It can be expected that the term gongmin is about 1.37 times more likely to be connected with rights in the regional newspaper as opposed to the CCP organ one. By contrast, the probabilities of gongmin in connections with responsibilities and participation are about 2.25 times and 1.47 times, respectively, more likely in the CCP organ newspaper than in the regional one. The result suggests that the society has the tendency to uphold citizens’ rights, while the state is inclined to highlight citizenship in terms of responsibilities and participation. In other words, discrepancy of meaning of citizenship exists between the state and society.

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Table 2.

Chi-square test for articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with rights, responsibilities, and participation by newspaper type (N = 5001).

	Pearson Chi-square	df	p value	Chi
Rights–Newspaper	57.334	1	.000 **	.107
Responsibilities–Newspaper	110.413	1	.000 **	−.149
Participation–Newspaper	24.307	1	.000 **	−.070

**

p < .001.

The prominence of citizens’ rights and the varied concerns for specific rights

A latitude comparison of percentages in Table 1 shows that of the three aspects of citizenship in general, gongmin in connection with rights was found in 27.0% of the collected articles in People’s Daily, triumphing over those containing gongmin connected with responsibilities (18.5%) and participation (14.0%). In Southern Metropolis Daily, the proportional gap between the first and the latter two was considerably wider (37.0% vs 8.2% and 9.5%). The state and society, particularly the latter, seemed to stress rights most prominently among the three aspects of citizenship.

While both newspapers were found to pronounce citizenship most utterly in terms of rights, attentions varied on specific rights, among which civil and political rights were the two of most concern (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Percentage of articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with four kinds of rights in the two newspapers.

As to the difference of specific rights between the newspapers, Table 3 shows that the only two statistically significant pairwise differences locate in political and cultural rights. The statistical implication is that of the four specific rights, the society is more likely to focus on citizens’ political rights, while the state tends to show more interest on citizens’ cultural rights.

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Table 3.

Chi-square test for articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with specific rights, responsibilities, and participation by newspaper type (N = 5001).

		Pearson chi-square	df	p value	Chi
Rights–Newspaper	Civil	8.692	1	.003	.042
	Political	18.968	1	.000 **	.062
	Social	.036	1	.849	−.003
	Cultural	34.839	1	.000 **	−.083
Responsibilities–Newspaper	Moral	109.264	1	.000 **	−.148
	Legal	68.964	1	.000 **	−.117
Participation–Newspaper	Political	33.707	1	.000 **	−.082
	Non-political	.237	1	.626	−.007

**

p < .001.

However, it is important to note that the Chinese term wenhua quanli (literally cultural rights) used in the newspapers does not share the exactly same meaning as cultural rights in discussions on citizenship in the West. In the process of content analysis, I noticed that, cultural rights in the Chinese context, especially from the perspective of the state, focused less on the celebration of ethnic culture, as perhaps might be expected in western discourse, and related more to citizens’ rights to entertainment, like music or movies, or to public facilities, such as museums. From a Western perspective on citizenship, these fall into the social aspect of rights of citizenship.

The superiority of moral responsibilities and political participation

In terms of specific responsibilities, comparing with legal responsibilities, there were more articles involving gongmin in connection with moral ones in both newspapers (Figure 2). Furthermore, the pairwise differences between newspaper and the two kinds of responsibilities were found to be statistically significant (Table 3), suggesting that the state is more likely to not only highlight moral responsibilities but also legal ones than society.

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Figure 2.

Percentage of articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with two kinds of responsibilities in the two newspapers.

As to specific participation, political participation of citizenship was superior to non-political one in both newspapers (Figure 3). Yet, because only the difference of political participation between the two newspapers was found to be statistically significant (Table 3), it is only statistically confident to say that the state is more likely than society to show concerns for political participation.

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Figure 3.

Percentage of articles involving gongmin in semantic connection with two kinds of participation in the two newspapers.

Evidence of gongmin as a political term in the Chinese context

Figure 4 shows that the two newspapers shared a similar tendency in terms of the number of articles involving the term gongmin across the examined months. The number of collected articles increased slightly with three upsurges around March of each year. This is when the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are convened annually. The two main political events seemed to stimulate the mention of the term gongmin in the newspapers.

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Figure 4.

Amount of articles involving the term gongmin in the two newspapers across the examined months.

The number of collected articles in both newspapers plummeted around each February, when is the Chinese new year season. The reduction of pages covering political issues in the periods may be a reason. Besides, for both newspapers, another low tide of the number of articles containing the term gongmin appeared in August 2008, when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games. The less use of gongmin in newspapers at the time was due in part to the focus on the Games and in part to the less discussion of political issues as the CCP intended to decouple the Games from politics.

The ups and downs of the number of collected articles imply that the term gongmin, like its English counterpart, has political implications. Its education cannot be inherently depoliticized, even though it appears to be as reviewed in foregoing section.

A discussion of the discrepancy of meaning of citizenship between the state and society

The key finding of this study is that although state and societal discourses pronounce citizens’ rights—civil and political rights in particular—through the three aspects of citizenship, the state is inclined to highlight citizens’ responsibilities, both moral and legal, and participation, notably the political one, whereas societal discourses have a tendency to uphold citizens’ rights, especially political rights. There is discrepancy of meaning of citizenship between the state and society.

The rising of Chinese citizens’ rights consciousness in society, as Goldman (2005) pointed out, may serve as the catalyst of the obvious presence of citizenship in terms of rights at the state level. Until recently, rights of citizenship are traditionally barely touched in citizenship-related education directed by the state, as reviewed in the foregoing section. Meanwhile, as reflected in Goldman’s (2005) work, citizens’ political rights are constrained and rights consciousness is grown from below rather than promoted from the top. Given these facts, the finding of the articulation of citizens’ rights by the state can be seen as the result of the increasing influence of social demands on the top.

With the growing social influence and Chinese citizens’ growing rights consciousness being reflected through political struggles in Goldman’s (2005) study, it comes as no surprise that civil and political rights attract more attention than other rights at both of the state and society levels. At first sight, the finding seemingly contradicts with Bell’s (2006) discussion that Chinese people may sacrifice civil and political rights to social and economic ones, given that the protection for citizens’ social rights in China nowadays still leaves much to be desired. But a second thought suggests that the articulation of civil and political rights found in this study is not necessarily at the expense but probably on the basis of social rights. The logic of the less people have, the more they desire, as Xia (2011) reasoned to the varied demands for political participation between different social groups, may apply here. It is fair to say that efforts on the development of citizens’ social rights in China have been made by the state, such as the substantive though uneven growth of per capital income in the last three decades (Hu, 2007) and the nationwide realization of 9-year free compulsory education in 2008 (Yu et al., 2009). Arguably, with satisfaction of some social rights, the issue of citizens’ civil and, particularly, political rights is once again raised from the bottom and reflected at the top. In this sense, if Bell’s (2006) proposition is correct, it could be complemented that although social and economic rights may be prioritized over civil and political rights for Chinese people, not necessarily complete but partial satisfaction of the former may be enough to bolster claim for the latter.

Yet, in comparison with the state, society has a tendency to pay attention more on rights but less on responsibilities and participation. This is identical with Xia’s (2011) finding of salient rights consciousness on one hand and political apathy on the other among citizens in general. However, the current study suggests that responsibilities consciousness which Tu (2011) revealed to be positively held by Chinese university students is likely to be ignored in society. The study of Tu (2011) and this study nonetheless expose the decoupling of consciousness and practice in Chinese society. For this study, one question arises: why rights consciousness cannot awaken citizenship practice based on rights in society? Besides the reasons of lack of institutional resource and moral decline proposed by Xia (2011), Tu’s (2011) account on her finding could be an answer to the question here, which is that the learning of active participation is absent in traditional citizenship-related education.

The current finding that the state is more inclined than society to stress citizens’ moral and legal responsibilities coincides with the fact that citizenship is articulated prominently in terms of morality, albeit the recent emergence of citizens’ rights, in moral education. In addition, the superiority of moral responsibilities over legal ones at the bottom can be seen as an impact of the long implementation of moral education. As reviewed in the foregoing section, socialist values are the premise of citizens’ responsibilities promoted in moral education. This may result in the disregard of responsibilities in society where there are concerns for civil and political rights foreign in socialist ideology, provoking the warning of “moral decline” by some scholars.

As to participation, the concern for citizens’ political participation seems to not only triumph over non-political ones at both levels but also is more likely to be expressed at the top than at the bottom. Although on what grounds citizens are encouraged and to what extent citizens are allowed to participate in political affairs need further examination, the participation is expected to be guided by the party-state given the prominent role of the state in socialism. The finding nevertheless gives a positive signal that the issue of citizens’ political participation is involved in the consideration of citizenship by the state.

Citizenship is a multidimensional concept. Kymlicka (2002) discusses that citizenship can be the ground of claim for rights and identity by ethnic, gender, religious minorities as well as the ground of attack against rights of minorities and reform of multiculturalism by cultural Conservatives, and citizenship can be the ground of offense against welfare state by the New Right as well as the ground of defense on welfare policies by the Left. By the same token, citizenship (gongmin) can be the ground of appeals to citizens’ rights in society and, at the same time, be the “less controversial” and “more noble” (Kymlicka, 2002: 318) ground of promotion of socialist morality when the traditional propaganda of socialist ideology is losing its power in the face of entrenched market-oriented economy. Furthermore, the concept of citizenship is dynamic rather than static. As society develops, the discourses of citizenship at both levels are subject to change. Follow-up examinations are required in the future.

Educational implications

The discrepant tendencies of meaning of citizenship at the state and society levels have four implications for citizenship education that aim to balance rights and responsibilities and promote civic participation in public affairs.

First, high concerns for rights, civil and political ones in particular, at both levels bring hopes that the promotion of rights of citizenship is not only desirable by the state but also has a foundation in society. Yet, rights and responsibilities of citizenship are two sides of the same coin. Playing one up and the other down could lead to a biased understanding of citizenship. In comparison with society, the state appears to have more balanced emphasis on the two in this study. Indeed, previous studies have shown the increasing presence of citizens’ rights in moral education, which can be seen as positive response by the state to social demands for rights. Yet, the social tendency to stress rights raises a question: if the state considers voices from society in policymaking, to what extent rights-related issues can be involved, and can rights and responsibilities be equally presented in the subject of moral education? The morality-oriented characteristic of moral education suggests that it may be hard to balance rights and responsibilities of citizenship in it. Thus, other approaches such as setting up citizenship education as a subject are worthy of exploration. Second, the long promotion of morality in citizenship-related education seems to fail to boost expression of responsibilities in the social discourse of citizenship. While it may be an impact of the high concern for rights in society, it urges for a rethinking of the effectiveness of current moral education.

Third, while the explicit presence of civil and political rights of citizenship at both levels may reflect the imperativeness of claims for the rights in today’s China, the apparent unconcern for social and cultural rights in the Western sense by no means implies that they are fully satisfied or not important at all in contemporary China. It reminds that social and cultural rights of citizenship cannot be ignored in policymaking of citizenship education. Questions such as how to animate discussion of citizens’ social rights and how to raise concern for the cultural rights of dozens of ethnic minority groups in Chinese society need exploration.

Last but not least, despite that concern for participation is not high at both levels if comparing with rights, it is at least not out of sight of the state, and hence, it is possible to persuade the state to promote education for active citizenship. But it needs to be cautious of the intention and the extent of active participation promoted by the party-state. Moreover, political participation is only one aspect of active citizenship. If active citizens are to be educated, non-political participation or community involvement, which is more common for ordinary citizens and proves to be capable of reinforcing the motivation of political participation (Crewe et al., 1997), should not be depreciated as is in the meaning of citizenship revealed in this study.