The intrinsic dynamics andinnovative potential of the rural poor in Chinacan be illustrated by the phenomena of farmerinnovation circles in north Shaanxi.These are informal networks used by farmers tocollaborate on technology learning andagricultural production. Though not limited tospecific geographic locations, these circlesare particularly important in the marginalareas of rural China where the complexity ofthe geographic environment, the diversity offarmer demands, and the inefficiency of formalagricultural extension networks impede thespread of new agricultural technologies. Socialconnectedness in the form of (...) householdcommunication networks, technology learninggroups, and inter-village links aids people's collective capacity to work together. In thestudy of 50 villages in this remote region, itwas found that households with more connectionswere more likely to adopt a range of newtechnologies, and so had higher income. Adetailed case study shows how collective actioncan lead to environmental improvements thatfurther increase incomes. It is concluded thatif there is to be sustainable development inthe marginal areas of China, then there willclearly need to be closer communication andinteraction between agricultural professionalsand rural communities. (shrink)

The paper presents a case study of sustainable development in rural China through a medical mission and missionary education initiative that sought to empower locals through dental health care education. The training method used was culturally adapted so that following the facilitators’ departure, the dental clinic continued to be run by the trained locals who, then, also went on to empower others using the same training method.

This paper aims to explore whether the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas of China. The results suggest that the usage of credit cards will be affected by the behavior of other farmers; namely, the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas. We also verify that women, older, and low-academic farmers show stronger peer effects. The results emphasize that, compared with the mass farmers and vulnerable farmers, the usage of elite (...) farmers is more likely to affect the same behaviors of other farmers. Our study contributes to prior literature by giving empirical insights into the consequences of peer effects on the credit card usage of farmers, which conduces to a better understanding of the financial decision-making of farmers. The research may provide a practical implication for the optimal design of policy interventions. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions can promote innovative financial products in rural areas with the help of peer effects; on the other hand, regulators can regulate farmers’ wrong financial behaviors by the social multiplier of peer effects to reduce systemic risks in rural finance. (shrink)

Capitalizing on a 15-year longitudinal dataset of 9–12 years old children in rural China, this study adopts a life course perspective and analyzes cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health problems from childhood to adulthood. Four domains of childhood life are selected to construct cumulative childhood adversity: socioeconomic hardship, family disruption, physical issue, and academic setback. Overall, cumulative childhood adversity significantly associates with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems as well as adults’ depression and self-esteem. However, cumulative (...) childhood adversity has no significant relationship with internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence. Furthermore, different domains of childhood adversity matter differently for mental health problems in different life stages. Physical issue and academic setback have the strongest association with internalizing and externalizing problems in childhood, while only socioeconomic hardship has a significant relationship with depression and self-esteem in adulthood. The relationship between cumulative childhood adversity and adult mental health problems is fully mediated by educational attainment. Finally, there is no gender difference in either the occurrence of cumulative childhood adversity or the association between cumulative childhood adversity and mental health problems. (shrink)

Many scholars of gender and migration assume that migration increases women’s household bargaining power, but this article argues that migration recreates and relies on patriarchal expectations that women return to household domestic labor. It draws on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork with migrant factory women in China’s export processing zones as well as one migrant-sending community in China. Based on this fieldwork, I argue that despite young women’s desires to continue migrating for factory jobs, older generations perpetuate gendered (...) views of female migration as licentious and risky, in opposition to a dominant paradigm of proper femininity that relegates young women to household labor. They do this because migration creates an intergenerational dependence in migrant origin sites. Older women, unemployable in factories and deprived of state welfare support at home, rely on wage remittances from high-earning migrant sons and sons-in-law for subsistence. To ensure they receive remittances, they encourage daughters to marry higher-earning migrant men, then pressure these daughters to cease migrating in order to perform household domestic labor in support of migrant husbands. This finding reflects constraints on the opportunities that migration delivers to women: Not all women can migrate, and those who cannot must vie for control over migrant remittances. (shrink)

The current study aimed to investigate differences in theory of mind between left-behind children and non-left-behind children in rural China and to examine the potential protective role of general reasoning ability in left-behind children’s theory of mind. Participants included 213 children aged 7.10 to 13.67 years (111 boys and 102 girls, M = 10.51 years, SD = 1.33), 101 of whom were left behind in rural areas by one or both migrating parents for at least 6 months. (...) The Strange Stories task, a second-order false belief task and a faux pas task were used to measure children’s theory of mind, and Sessions B and C in Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices were used to test children’s general reasoning ability. The results showed that left-behind children scored lower on both the faux pas task and Strange Stories task. Additionally, on second-order false belief understanding, left-behind boys performed worse than non-left-behind boys, while left-behind girls scored higher than non-left behind girls. Moreover, children’s general reasoning ability moderated the relationship between parental migrant status and children’s faux pas understanding: For children with high levels of general reasoning ability, left-behind children performed similarly to non-left-behind children, while for children with low levels of general reasoning ability, left-behind children scored lower than non-left-behind children, indicating that general reasoning ability buffered the negative effect of being left behind on children’s theory of mind development. The implications of these findings for training directed at left-behind children are discussed. (shrink)

How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for (...) class='Hi'>China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration. As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization. (shrink)

This is a review of Mu Peng's recent book on popular religion in rural China.

Improvements of the happiness of the rural population are an essential sign of the effectiveness of relative poverty governance. In the context of today’s digital economy, assessing the relationship between digital literacy and the subjective happiness of rural low-income groups is of great practicality. Based on data from China Family Panel Studies, the effect of digital literacy on the subjective well-being of rural low-income groups was empirically tested. A significant happiness effect of digital literacy on (...) class='Hi'>rural low-income groups was found. Digital literacy promotes the subjective happiness of rural low-income groups through income increase and consumption growth effects. The observed happiness effect is heterogeneous among different characteristic groups, and digital literacy significantly positively impacts the subjective happiness of rural low-income groups. Decomposition of subjective happiness into life satisfaction and job satisfaction shows that digital literacy significantly positively affects the job and life satisfaction of rural low-income groups. This paper demonstrates that digital literacy induces a practical happiness effect. To further strengthen the subjective welfare effect of digital literacy in the construction of digital villages, the government should focus on cultivating digital literacy among low-income groups from the demand side. The construction of digital infrastructure should be actively promoted from the supply side. (shrink)

Introduction: Children affected by parental HIV are more likely than unaffected peers to experience trauma and are at-risk for negative psychological and social outcomes. This study aimed to examine the relationship between adverse childhood events and psychosocial functioning among children affected by parental HIV.Methods: A total of 790 children ages 6–17 from Henan, China were enrolled in a longitudinal, randomized controlled trial of a resilience-based psychosocial intervention. At baseline, children reported on numerous psychosocial factors, including trauma exposure, symptoms of (...) anxiety and depression, and peer social functioning. We used linear regression analysis to test the direct effect of trauma exposure on peer social functioning. We then tested whether depression and anxiety symptoms served as two potential parallel mediators in the association between trauma exposure and peer social functioning.Results: Trauma exposure was significantly associated with poor peer social functioning when controlling for key covariates. When depression and anxiety symptoms were added to the model, the association between trauma exposure and peer social functioning became nonsignificant. Instead, there were significant indirect effects from trauma exposure to peer social functioning via depression and anxiety.Conclusion: This study is among the first to link trauma exposure to peer social functioning deficits for children affected by parental HIV and demonstrates that symptoms of anxiety and depression mediate this relationship. Findings underscore the need for comprehensive psychosocial support for children affected by HIV, including screening for trauma exposure and mental health disorders. (shrink)

Female-entrepreneurship plays a significantly important role in rural areas of China today. In fact, it is a driving force behind inclusive economic development of the country as a whole. However, notably very little literature out there has focused on the impact of how widespread usage of information technology tools affects the mothers entrepreneurship in the outskirt regions. Here, in this paper, the authors attempt to explore the finer details of such an impact by utilizing the data from the (...) 2017 China Integrated Social Survey; along with the IV-Probit model to explore the transmission mechanism. Interestingly enough, it was discovered that Internet applications and tools do indeed increase entrepreneurship among women with children by a roughly 7.88%. In addition, this paper finds that the utilization of such “InfoTech” promote a continuous progress in entrepreneurship among those women with children who endeavor to start a self-managed enterprise in the less developed areas. Lastly, when looking the analysis of the transmission mechanism, this paper found that the role of Internet-usage in promoting rural mothers entrepreneurship was mainly through three factors – the gender equality effect, the information learning effect, and the financing effect. This accumulated data will be thoroughly presented here in the ensuing sections. (shrink)

Agricultural modernisation is a longstanding goal of China’s Party-state. Since the early 2000s, it has pursued this goal through policies designed to facilitate land consolidation and support the expansion of large agricultural enterprises – ‘New Agricultural Operators’ (NAOs). In this paper we explore the effect of these policies on the livelihoods of a cohort of smallholder orange growers in the mountainous regions of Hubei province and the local political economy. An analysis of data from a 2019 survey of 266 (...) households and interviews with villagers, agribusiness executives, cooperative leaders, and government officials, we find smallholder farmers are earning good incomes as independent commodity producers, withstanding attempts by local officials at land consolidation, and bypassing NAOs to self-determine their own modes of production and exchange. Our results speak to the ongoing debate about the future of smallholder farming in China, identify the strengths and limitations of recent state-centric analyses of agrarian transition, and re-iterate the pitfalls of the central government’s agricultural modernisation agenda. (shrink)

The shift from the conventional agri-food system to alternative practices is a challenging transition for agricultural producers, yet surprisingly under-studied. Little research has examined the social and cultural processes in rural communities that mobilize producers and construct and sustain producer-driven alternative food networks (AFNs). For AFNs to go beyond just offering “alternative foods” or “alternative networks” and to be constructed as “alternative economies”, this transformation in the producer community is indispensable. This paper presents a case study of a (...) class='Hi'>rural cooperative in Shanxi, China. The discontent with both productivist agriculture and the social decay in communities motivated a group of women to engage in a decade-long process of social mobilization, cultural reconstruction, and learning by experimentation. Through this, they developed an alternative vision and successfully created a localized alternative socio-economic model, which I call “anti-productivism”. It prioritizes ecological sustainability, self-reliance, reciprocity, and cultural values over output maximization, productivity growth, commodity exchange, and monetary gains. This case contrasts sharply with the urban-initiated, consumer-driven AFNs studied in the China literature, which mostly just offered alternative foods but brought little change to the producer community. It shows that the alternative economy must be embedded in an alternative community united by strong social bonds and shared cultural values. (shrink)

Research in school success in contemporary China has argued that market reforms have reproduced the advantages for children from the cadre and the professional families while simultaneously creating new opportunities for children of the new arising economic elites. However, it has performed less for traditional peasant families. This book places a special emphasis on how rural parents from different social backgrounds use _guanxi_ to maintain the interconnectedness between their families and schools to create advantages for their children in (...) school success. It investigates, by an ethnographic study in a rural county in middle China, how families from different social backgrounds within rural society get involved in the schooling of their children and how this contributes to different patterns of school success. The book argues that schools provide few formal and routine channels for rural parents to become involved in their children’s schooling. This raises the importance of family strategic initiatives to employ _guanxi_ in the creation of advantages for their children’s school success. It concludes with discussions about _guanxi_ as an important mechanism for social exclusion in post-socialist China. Chapters include: Family Strategies, Parental Involvement, and School Success The Roles of Parents: Voices of Parents in Zong Regarding School Involvement Policy Discourses: Missing the Link between Family and School Peasants: Family and Kinship The Blurring Division between Home and School This concise and comprehensive book is a qualitative study that will appeal to researchers and advance students in Chinese education and society. (shrink)

Population aging has brought great challenges to many regions throughout the world. Enhancing the sense of participation, access, and well-being of older adults is the goal of China’s aging development. This study, taking urban–rural difference as the entry point, examined the difference in subjective well-being between urban and rural older learners. A total of 2,007 older adults learners aged over 50 years were recruited in Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shandong Provinces in China, including 773 rural older (...) adults and 1,234 urban older adults. This study found that there was a significant positive correlation between senior learning and the subjective well-being of urban and rural older adult learners. Furthermore, there was a significant difference between the subjective well-being of urban and rural older adult learners’ and there was also an urban–rural difference between the effects of older adult learning on the subjective well-being. Based on the above findings, this study reveals the mechanism of the impact of older adult learning on subjective well-being of urban and rural older adults and gives relevant suggestions for improving the subjective well-being of urban and rural older learners. (shrink)

Pour des raisons pratiques autant qu’idéologiques, les États socialistes ont souhaité la pleine participation des femmes au travail, qui supposait leur libération des tâches ménagères dévoreuses de temps. Ils ont, pour la plupart, passé un contrat social implicite avec leurs populations féminines : les femmes à l’usine et au champ, en échange d’une réduction des tâches domestiques, soit à travers leur socialisation, soit par la fourniture de produits finis allégeant le travail. L’article entend montrer que la Chine rurale fut une (...) exception à ce modèle. Alors que la participation des femmes rurales au travail augmentait fortement, le rationnement de marchandises peu abondantes et une politique empêchant les paysans de disposer d’argent liquide faisaient que les textiles et autres produits industriels sont restés hors de portée de la majorité des ruraux. En conséquence, des millions de femmes rurales ont continué, au prix d’un travail manuel laborieux, à vêtir et nourrir leurs familles, à un moment où triplait leur participation aux travaux des champs. Cette double charge particulièrement intense a permis à l’État chinois une rapide accumulation. (shrink)

Rural electrification is now and will remain an essential element for rural development in China and other developing countries. With more than half of the world’s population living in rural communities, lessons for rural renewable energy applications and assessment from China can be very helpful in defining a global sustainable development strategy. This paper describes energy needs in rural China, examines the resource availability of three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang in (...) Western China), and evaluates rural energy options and the economics of stand-alone off-grid renewable energy technologies for rural application in this region. An eight-year collaborative effort between several of China’s leading energy and environmental research institutes and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy demonstrates the existence of a viable renewable energy-based strategy to address rural electricity needs in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner. (shrink)

Despite the role of public health interventions in controlling disease transmission and protecting the public during the COVID-19 emergency, the implementation of quarantine restrictions has raised serious ethical concerns, especially in relation to the well-being of vulnerable populations. Drawing on the lived experiences of rural Chinese migrants who are subject to pandemic control, the authors highlight their inadequate capacities to manage the risks associated with the pandemic and adjust to quarantine restrictions. Informed by an ethical discourse of vulnerability, we (...) show that underpinning this group’s deficient coping strategies is a range of detrimental social structures and institutions that have developed under the persistent rural–urban divide in China. These structural constraints and pathologies expose rural migrants to serious risks and uncertainties while depriving them of the means and resources necessary to protect their own interests in the process of complying with quarantine restrictions. Understanding the plight of rural Chinese migrants as a structural problem also has implications for the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We further suggest a need for state intervention to mitigate structural deficiencies and empower the vulnerable during the COVID-19 era. (shrink)

The sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 has caused a huge impact on the Chinese residents' health and economic level. In the pandemic background, the country and its institutions have introduced pandemic-related insurance to stabilize the national situation. At this stage, insurance has played an increasingly important role in social life. With the popularization of insurance, the idea of buying insurance to avoid risk has gradually become popular among people. Among them, the New Rural Cooperative Medical System has been (...) farmers' common choice. The NRCMS, a mutual aid system created by farmers spontaneously in the country, plays a great role in guaranteeing farmers access to basic health services, alleviating poverty caused by disease and returning to poverty due to disease, and promoting poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. Given this backdrop, we study the efficiency of the NRCMS that can effectively promote poverty alleviation and rural revitalization and ensure the people's happy life. Implementing the Data Envelopment Analysis, we find that technological progress is one of the main factors influencing the efficiency of the NRCMS. Therefore, it is important to improve the technology for providing the efficiency of the NRCMS and promoting the happiness of the society. (shrink)

Trust is of great significance to the economic and social development of a country. In the case of China, the trust of rural women has undergone tremendous changes along with the development of rural areas. It is seen that the trust of rural women has changed from localized to generalized trust, and it is stated that the major factor leading to this transformation is education. To explore the phenomenon empirically, the current study uses the survey data (...) of rural women sourced from China Family Panel Studies over the year 2018. Through the ordered probit model, the study reveals that education plays a significant role in influencing rural women’s generalized trust and localized trust. Through mediation analysis, the study further reveals that reliance on Internet information, access to public resources, and income are the factors mediating the relationship between education and generalized trust. Besides, the outcomes further unveil that the impact of education on localized trust is stronger when the level of mobility is low. For robustness check, the current study additionally employs a regression discontinuity model. The overall findings elucidate that education is the major factor triggering the trust of rural women in China. The findings propose that policymakers in China should imply education-oriented strategies as individuals with higher levels of education are more inclined to trust others. (shrink)

Revealing the general status quo of teacher curriculum leadership has great theoretical, policy, and practical significance. However, large-scale empirical investigations in this area are rare, and there is even less attention to the current situation of rural teacher curriculum leadership. Based on the survey of 2,966 rural teachers in 20 provinces of China, this paper presented the status quo of rural teacher curriculum leadership and examined influencing factors through multiple linear regression analysis. It was found that (...) curriculum leadership of rural teachers was at a low level with backward leadership views, lack of practical ability, and low sense of identity. Regression analysis demonstrated that individual field factors had a significant impact on teachers’ curriculum leadership. Specifically, the higher the teachers’ leadership willingness, trust in others, and self-efficacy, the higher the curriculum leadership. The school field was also an important influential aspect. In particular, the formation of a common vision and teacher community by the school and the appropriate empowerment of the principal had a significant positive impact on the curriculum leadership of rural teachers. Based on these key findings, several improvement suggestions are put forward at the end, which can be used as references for other countries to develop improvement plans on rural teacher curriculum leadership. (shrink)

As the per capita income level increases, both environmental quality and income inequality will change significantly, which arouses people’s attention on the relationship between income inequality and environmental quality. Based on mathematical derivations, we first prove that when the relationship between per capita income and environmental pollution is nonlinear, and environmental pollution is not only related to per capita income, but also, among other potential determinants, to income inequality. Then, we use the two-way fixed estimator to estimate the impact of (...) income inequality on environmental quality by decomposing the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology model. The impact of income inequality on environmental pollution is significantly positive, that is, as the income gap widens, industrial pollutant emissions, carbon dioxide emissions, and PM2.5 in the air will increase; there is an “Inverted U-shaped” impact relationship between income inequality and environmental quality, that is, environmental pollution increases first and then decreases with the increase of per capita GDP; per capita income is the intermediate variable between income inequality and environmental quality. The relationship between income inequality and environmental quality should be fully considered when formulating relevant policies. The government should adopt differentiated environmental policies targeted at low-and-high income groups to achieve a win-win situation of economic growth and environmental protection. (shrink)

Culturally responsive teaching has been found to promote student engagement and enhance learning in the classroom. As an effective pedagogy, the past decade has witnessed a soaring interest in exploring teachers’ competence, self-efficacy, and influencing factors in implementing CRT across school subjects. However, scant attention has been directed to language teachers’ engagement with CRT. Given the increasing diversity in students’ socio-economic status, cultural backgrounds, learning needs and preferences in English language classrooms, CRT has also become a prominent concern in (...) class='Hi'>China. This study sets out to explore English as a Foreign Language teacher engagement with CRT in rural schools in China. With a multi-case study of eight EFL teachers, the researchers collected data through individual interviews and classroom observations. Four types of teacher engagement based on the foci were identified and were further characterized by cognitive, emotional, and social aspects. This study also taps into the internal and external factors influencing the teachers’ engagement with CRT. Implications and suggestions were provided to tackle the problems of English Language Education in rural China and contexts alike worldwide. (shrink)

Resumen: La ola creciente de la China-chic proporciona un nuevo modo de presentación para la excelente cultura tradicional, permitiendo a la gente volver a ser testigo de la vitalidad innovadora de la cultura local y brindando una nueva vía de creación para la cultura popular rural. En este contexto, el diseño con el tema de la cultura popular rural se enfrenta tanto a nuevas oportunidades como a nuevos retos. En este artículo, basado en el estudio de caso (...) del diseño folclórico rural del Templo señorial del condado de Hexian, en la provincia de Anhui, se analizan brevemente la relación dialéctica y la práctica de la herencia y la innovación en el trabajo de diseño bajo el trasfondo del China-chic. Se propusieron estrategias de diseño innovador para revitalizar el énfasis de la gente en la cultura tradicional, reavivar la atención de la gente hacia la cultura tradicional y ampliar la vía de diseño innovador de una vía de comunicación de la cultura tradicional para promover la transformación creativa y el desarrollo innovador de la cultura tradicional china. (shrink)

In the traditional system of Chinese families, individuals are embedded in the institution of the family with defined obligations to enhance family development. As a consequence of the male-biased sex ratio at birth in China since the 1980s, an increasing number of surplus rural males have been affected by a marriage squeeze becoming involuntary bachelors. Under China’s universal heterosexual marriage tradition, family development of rural involuntary bachelors has largely been ignored, but in China’s gender-imbalanced society, (...) it is necessary to adopt a family-based approach to identify and study the plight of rural involuntary bachelors. Studies on gender imbalance indicate that these men face multiple risks from the perspectives of their life course, the family life cycle, and the family ethic. To a certain extent, these risks are caused by a conflict between the individual’s family life and family ethics and are mainly reflected in problems concerning marriage, health, and old-age support. Not only do these vulnerabilities affect the individual and family development across the whole life cycle but also pose major risks to social development in the face of strong gender imbalance. In order to deal with risks faced by rural involuntary bachelors, core ethical principles, including autonomy, beneficence, and justice, need to be adopted. Through adjustments to informal support provided by the family and formal support provided by policy-makers, risk of uncertainty in family development faced by rural involuntary bachelors could be reduced. (shrink)

This study examines the key historical stages of the sustainable rural education policy development, including the stage of Rural Education Restoration and Adjustment Period (1979–1985); the stage of Comprehensive Reform Period of Rural Education (1985–2003); the stage of Rural Education Coordinated Development Period (2003–2018); and the stage of Rural Education Revitalization and Development Period (2018 to present). Along with the analysis, the policy characteristics of sustainable development of rural education policy in China concentrates (...) on adhering to the unified leadership of the Party as the fundamental, adhering to the principle of comprehensive reform, adhering to the goal of serving rural development; adhere to promoting equity in education as the main task; and adhering to the construction of teachers as the key. In addition, policy problems on the sustainable development of rural education in China are also highlighted in this study. The conclusion and remarks are finally offered in the last. (shrink)

The Dual Filial Piety Model offers a universally applicable framework for understanding essential aspects of intergenerational relations across diverse cultural contexts. The current research aimed to examine two important issues concerning this model that have lacked investigation: the roles of parental socialization and social ecologies in the development of reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety attitudes. To this end, a two-wave short-term longitudinal survey study was conducted among 850 early adolescents residing in urban and rural China, who completed questionnaires (...) twice, 6 months apart, in the spring semester of grade 7 and the fall semester of grade 8. Multigroup path analyses revealed bidirectional associations over time between perceived parenting styles and adolescents’ filial piety attitudes, with both similarities and differences in these associations between urban and rural China. In both settings, perceived authoritative parenting predicted increased reciprocal filial piety 6 months later, whereas perceived authoritarian parenting predicted reduced reciprocal filial piety among urban adolescents over time. Moreover, in both settings, reciprocal filial piety predicted higher levels of perceived authoritative parenting and lower levels of perceived authoritarian parenting 6 months later, with the latter effect being stronger among urban adolescents. Adolescents’ perceived parenting styles did not predict their authoritarian filial piety over time; however, authoritarian filial piety predicted higher levels of perceived authoritative parenting 6 months later in both settings. The findings highlight the roles of transactional socialization processes between parents and youth as well as social ecologies in the development of filial piety, thus advancing the understanding of how the universal human motivations underlying filial piety may function developmentally across different socioeconomic and sociocultural settings. (shrink)

This study examines the mobile phone practices of rural left-behind children whose one or both parents migrate to cities for better earnings and the impact of such practices on migrant families in China. The study has used ethnographic approach by conducting participant observations and interviews of 21 LBC, residing in Guangren village, south China's Guangxi Autonomous Region. The study uses domestication theory to analyze these LBC's adoption of mobile phones in their daily routines and spaces in and (...) out of their households. The key findings are as follows: the LBC used mobile phones primarily to engage with their distant parent; through collaborative efforts, they tried to enhance familial connections; and they overcome the separation issue by co-participating in ongoing events, thus making the domestication of mobile phone a distant solving of real-world problems faced by migrant parent and their LBC. The study concludes that LBC's innovative uses of mobile phones empowered them by building shared virtual space with their migrant parent, via which they handled the separation issue. In such shared virtual spaces, LBC's families have developed rich expressions of familial connections in various forms based on the limited perpetuate connectedness. (shrink)

Abstract:“Modern Sexual Organicity” (《现代性器》 Xiàndài Xìngqì) and “Super Killer” (《大杀器》 Dà Shaqì) by Han Bo, which I translate and discuss here, unfold around the poet’s playfully sustained series of observations of the irreconcilable gaps and irreducible dissonances between Western modernity and Chinese contemporaneity. Focusing on the (post)structural dimension of the extreme intricacy and intensity of Han’s language game that polysemically intersects with traditional Chinese poetic moves as well, which itself mirrors the structurally (bi)polarized and gendered social realities in China, (...) this essay highlights the unfused/able figure of the woman, a “farmwoman” on the train in particular, a moving image of precarious mobility, transience, and vitality. (shrink)

The number of new “Special-post teachers” has decreased considerably, especially at China’s rural schools in recent years. This study applies the semi-structured interview data of new “Special-post teachers” in China’s rural schools to explore their perceptions on the rural new teachers’ problems and challenges at nine developing rural provinces in China. It finds that the new rural teachers were confronted with severe challenges and difficulties for their professional adaptability in rural areas, (...) such as the interpersonal relationship, heavy workload and dissatisfied salary, and unqualified teaching capacities. Those interviewed new “Special-post teachers” also learned lots from those challenges in reality, such as the diversified personality characteristics, professional beliefs and career motivation. It also suggested that, Chinese government should offer sufficient and diversified educational policies to stimulate rural teacher development, especially for new “Special-post Teachers” at rural areas. Chinese central government plays a significant role to guarantee the sustainable funding support for the development of new “Special-post teachers”. In addition, the principals in rural schools should pay close attention to new Special-post Teachers’ personability characteristics, hobbies and needs to create a supportive teaching environment for them to move toward successful rural teacher development. (shrink)

There is currently enough systematic literature presents about socioeconomic inequalities across different disciplines. However, this study relates socioeconomic inequality to rural students educational management information systems in different schools in China. The dynamic force of information technology could not be constrained in the modern techno-based world. Similarly, the study was qualitative and ethnographic. Data were collected through an interview guide and analyzed with thematic scientific analysis. Ten male and ten female students were interviewed based on data saturation point. (...) The purposive sampling technique was used for the rural school and students’ selection. This study summarizes the findings and brings together in-depth emic and etic findings based on new Marxist conflict theory, exploitation, and domination power lens. The study found that SEI creates disparities among EMIS. Household income inequality has influenced on educational achievements of rural areas’ students. Gender-based SEI was not present among students. Family wealth and SES-based exploitation are present regarding EMIS among male and female students. Household wealth is significant for the EMIS. The study put forward a recommendation to the policymakers that exploitation could be overcome among students if the government provides equal opportunities for access to the EMIS. (shrink)