Orna Naftali

Hebrew University of Jerusalem | HUJI · Department of Asian Studies

An anthropological study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in contemporary urban China. Drawing on diverse evidence from Chinese government, academic, media, and pedagogic publications, as well as on participant observation and interviews in two primary schools and among elite and middle class families in Sh...

This book explores the dramatic transformation of Chinese childhood in the post-socialist era. It examines how government policies introduced in China over the last few decades and processes of social and economic change are reshaping the lives of individual children and the conceptions of Chinese childhood in complex, contradictory ways. Drawing o...

The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, among young Chinese has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state's 'patrio...

This chapter aims to provide an overview of some of the major trends and unique problems that characterize child-rights legislation in the PRC. It includes a brief history of the evolution of children’s rights in modern China, situating these developments within the broader framework of international child rights legislation. Presenting the key con...

The perceived innocence and vulnerability of children has been a dominant theme in modern conceptualizations of childhood, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War. A growing number of studies suggest however that a notion of children as capable of violent or even lethal conduct has not altogether vanished from post-World War II public...

The most well-known and widely cited literature in the multidisciplinary field of childhood studies has been undertaken by scholars based in the Global North, who have produced theoretical frameworks and conceptualisations about childhood frequently deployed by Northern and Southern scholars alike. These are often based on priorities developed in N...

Schools constitute key sites for legal socialization, the process whereby youth develop their relationship with the law. Yet, what does legal socialization entail in the context of an authoritarian Party-state such as China? The article examines this question by analyzing citizenship education textbooks revised in the Xi era - a time of deepening s...

War culture has had tremendous power in shaping modern Chinese understandings of the nation. The role of children’s education in the creation of Chinese war culture in the Mao era (1949-76) has nonetheless received scarce attention. Drawing on the analysis of school textbooks, pedagogical and media publications, this study highlights the existence...

This chapter examines recruitment campaigns for the Chinese military under the current leadership of Xi Jinping (2012-) in the context of China’s attempts to modernize and professionalize its army. The discussion reviews the conscription challenges the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) faces in the 2000s and the steps undertaken to address these chall...

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of ‘war education.’ In China, an extensive ‘Patriotic Education’ campaign and an expanded ‘National Defense Education’ curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused o...

Since the 1990s, the Chinese Party-state has attempted to teach youth how to think and speak about the nation through a "Patriotic Education" campaign waged in schools, media, and public sites. The reception of these messages by youth of different social backgrounds remain a disputed issue, however. Drawing on a multi-sited field study conducted am...

Recent decades have witnessed the growing use of military-style training methods for children in PRC schools as well as in various therapeutic programs offered by state and private institutions. Intended to serve as a remedy for a plethora of moral, social, and psychological afflictions thought to characterize the present generation of Chinese yout...

In the past two decades or so, Shanghai's local government has systematically attempted to (re)establish the city as a global metropolis through various measures, including the fostering of a 'cosmopolitan' education and a spirit of 'international understanding' among the city's younger residents. This paper discusses the disparate meanings and val...

In recent years, mainland China has witnessed a significant rise in popular expressions of anti-foreign sentiments, particularly among people under the age of 30. Some analysts link this development to the Chinese government’s “patriotic education” campaign waged in the mass media, in public sites, and most noticeably in the nation's schools. Other...

Over the past two decades or so, China has witnessed a significant rise in public expressions of nationalist sentiment. Noting the prevalence of participants in their thirties or younger in these grassroots nationalist movements, a growing number of studies have begun to document the shifting nature of Chinese youth nationalism and the factors that...

War culture has had tremendous power in shaping modern Chinese understandings of the nation and memories of its past. In this paper, I examine the symbolic role of the child in the construction of China's national war culture during the formative years of the People's Republic, a time when China was actively involved in the Korean War (1950-53). Of...

n the past decade and a half, China has witnessed a significant rise in youth expressions of nationalist sentiment, manifested in anti-Western and anti-Japanese demonstrations on city streets; in consumer boycotts of foreign products; and in the flourishing of a hyper-nationalistic discourse on the Internet. Some analysts suggest that these phenome...

Since the early 2000s, the Chinese military has been engaged in the production of military- and war-themed cultural products which increasingly employ new media and new technologies. Many of these products specifically target children and youth, and many are also a result of collaborations between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and commercial f...

“Are children persons (ren) or objects (wu)?” inquires the author of an essay entitled “Avoiding Erroneous Views of the Child in Family Education” (“Zai jiating jiaoyu zhong quzou ertong guan de wuqu”). The question might seem peculiar, but the writer, who is also the former Deputy Head of the Wuhan Education Research Institute in China, is not bei...

“When I was young, children had to wait until the adults sat at the table before they could even touch their chopsticks!” Ms Xu, a 55-year-old retiree and a volunteer at a local parents’ school, told me. “In the past, we Chinese paid great attention to matters of seniority and propriety…. We used to respect our parents and teachers. Now it’s all di...

“Respect for the independent rights of children is the hallmark of any modern, civilized society…. From this day onward, when parents behave in a way that violates these rights, children will be able to voice their objections knowing that the law is on their side” (Cheng and Ren, 2004). So declared a top Shanghai government official following the a...

This book began with a short account describing the alarm and dismay felt by a Chinese educator at the sight of a woman beating her child in public. The denunciation of this mother’s actions over the pages of a CCP news publication, I suggested, indicates a pivotal shift in Chinese conceptions of childhood, power, and subjectivity in the post-socia...

“When we were parents, children usually wanted what you wanted,” one Shanghai grandmother told me after an afternoon dance class at a local pensioners’ club. To vigorous nods of approval from her classmates, some of whom were still busy collecting their breaths after dancing across the room for the last hour or so, she continued to describe the dif...

In recent years, China has witnessed the emergence of a new, psychological discourse of childhood. Children, it is argued, are not 'short, light-bodied adults' but persons with unique psychological needs who must learn to attain self-awareness, emotional stability, and appropriate behavioral responses to frustrating social situations. Notably, thes...

In the rapidly urbanizing societies of contemporary Asia, city school systems have been at the center of recent efforts to foster a cosmopolitan outlook and an ethos of "global citizenship" among children and youth. The present paper examines how civic education textbooks produced and taught in the city of Shanghai, China currently attempt to teach...

In the past few decades, China has witnessed the emergence of a psychological discourse of childhood.This new discourse portrays children as persons with unique emotional needs and seeks to redefine childhood as a time of play and relaxation rather than study or toil. Drawing on the results of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai's schools and homes...

This study explores two aspects of the privatization of childhood in contemporary urban China: the emergent discourse on children’s privacy and children’s growing seclusion within the home. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author describes urban caregivers’ engagement with the issue of children’s privacy, and argues that we are now witnessing...