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.

全球竞争中的孝道民族主义：2001年普通话课本改革

关键词：初等教育；课本；孝道民族主义；全球公民。

21世纪初期， 中国政府在如何寻求在国内和海外代表中国的问题上发生了深刻的转变。尽管很多学者和海外中国观察家认为一个新的自信的中国是在2008年经济危机后出现的，我认为这个转变其实早在近十年前的课程改革时就发生了。对普通话初等教学课本的演化进行的分析表明，从2001年起，教材的发展就致力于灌输培养日益全球化的人口与祖国之间的永久纽带。具体来说，我揭示了“孝道的民族主义”是如何在普通话教材中打造产生，并为在培养学生融入全球化的世界的同时，也使新一代中国青年既为祖国感到骄傲，也忠诚于祖国而奠定基础。

Translated from English by Li Guo