Filial Nationalism in Global Competition: The 2001 Reform of Mandarin Textbooks

In the early 2000s the Chinese government initiated a profound shift in how it sought to represent China at home and abroad. Whereas many scholars and China watchers argue that a newly assertive China emerged in the wake of the 2008-economic crisis, I argue that this shift took place in the curriculum reforms nearly a decade earlier. An analysis of the evolution of textbooks used for primary Mandarin instruction shows that, starting in 2001, textbooks were developed to inculcate a perennial bond between an increasingly globalized population and its motherland. Specifically, I show how the emergence of “filial nationalism” was crafted in Mandarin-language textbooks, laying the groundwork for a new generation of Chinese youth to simultaneously feel pride for and loyalty to the motherland while preparing them for integration into a globalized world.