Chinese International Students and Citizenship

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 1-8

3. Historical and Conceptual Context of Chinese International Students’ Citizenship

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 9-32

4. Discovering the Methodology

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 33-56

5. Incorporating Everyday Experience into a Third Space

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 57-68

6. Study, Study, and Study

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 69-78

7. ‘China Is Good Without Democracy’

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 79-89

8. Kites Flying: Chinese Students Reflect on Life Back Home

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 91-100

9. The Citizens and the People

   • Xiudi Zhang

   Pages 101-109

10. A Bird Cage

    • Xiudi Zhang

    Pages 111-118

11. Battle Between David and Goliath

    • Xiudi Zhang

    Pages 119-124

12. Summary and Conclusions

    • Xiudi Zhang

    Pages 125-133

13. Back Matter

    Pages 135-147

    PDF

This book investigates how Chinese international students reconfigure their sense of themselves as citizens when they reflect on what Chinese citizenship means in the context of New Zealand. Adopting a case study approach, it develops a theory relating to the thoughts of Chinese international students; the theory is based on the communities, schools, family and state relationships of both their past and their contemporary daily experiences. It finds that the struggles of Chinese young people lie in between being individuals and submitting to the general will of the family, state and guanxi (a Chinese concept of interpersonal relationships). The book argues that the Western literature on citizenship is not sufficient in helping us understand how it is viewed in the Chinese contexts.


It offers readers a picture of what citizenship means for Chinese young people and the role of citizenship education in Modern Chinese society, and demonstrates that theChinese young people studied re-educated themselves on citizenship in a way that is unstable and emotional. This book makes important contributions to the literature on Chinese students who are studying abroad by going beyond the well-researched topics of academic and social experience to explore deeper understandings of each individual student’s relationship to family and the state in China and how the study abroad experience has developed new understandings of individual’s relationships to China, and new possibilities for contributing to Chinese society on return.

• Chinese citizenship
• society, citizens and government
• Chinese young people
• Chinese international students
• democracy in China
• Guanxi
• Anti-Chinese citizenship
• Citizens and family
• Chinese Communist Party
• education in New Zealand
• Chinese international education

• Zhoukou Normal University, Zhoukou City, China

  Xiudi Zhang

Xiudi Zhang graduated from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and works at Zhoukou Normal University, China. Her research areas include education policy, evaluation and case study.

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