ctl 15 (3) pp.

341–356 Intellect Limited 2020

Citizenship Teaching & Learning

Volume 15 Number 3
© 2020 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl_00038_1
Received 21 October 2019; Accepted 18 May 2020

SICONG CHEN
Kyushu University

Advancing global citizenship

education in Japan and
China: An exploration and
comparison of the national
curricula

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The literature widely reports that national citizenship remains the focus of citi- global citizenship
zenship education in Japan and China, despite the emerged global elements in citizenship education
both cases. Yet the literature stops short of exploring how to advance the agenda national curricula
of global citizenship in the dominant national citizenship education under the comparison
centralized education systems in Japan and China. With a list of global citizen Japan
attributes derived from a particular conception of citizenship, this article iden- China
tifies and compares the pedagogical capacity and potential for global citizenship
education in relevant Japanese and Chinese national curriculum guidelines, many
of which have been recently revised. It is found that many attributes are indeed
supported in the Japanese and Chinese guidelines, which, furthermore, leave peda-
gogical potential for the development of unsupported others. The findings at the
policy level bear practical and research implications for global citizenship educa-
tion in Japanese and Chinese schools.

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Sicong Chen

INTRODUCTION
In the contemporary discussions and proposals about global citizenship
education (GCE), a prominent advocate is the UNESCO, which highlights
GCE as a strategic area in its education sector in 2014–21 (UNESCO 2014).
The international commitment to GCE is echoed in the education policy
developments in many countries, including Japan and China. Soysal and
Wong (2015) observed that education reforms in Japan and China since the
mid-1980s ‘decidedly converge in terms of the priorities and goals’ (2015: 21),
among which is the shared emphasis on ‘the “ideal” citizen as a national and
transnational enterprise’ able to act beyond as well as within national bounda-
ries (2015: 37). More specifically, in a China–Japan comparative study on the
education reforms and attendant changes in citizenship education curricula
and textbooks, Rose discusses that:

new curriculum guidelines implemented in the first decade of the

twenty-first century in both China and Japan emphasized the need to
develop in students a global outlook, an awareness of, and respect for,
other cultures and races, and an understanding of global issues.
(2015: 83)

Such emerged global elements in citizenship education, however, as Rose

(2015) cautions, does not imply the ‘fundamental adoption’ of post-national
citizenship or the ‘discernible dilution’ of national citizenship, as national citi-
zenship remains ‘the overriding focus’ in both Japanese and Chinese citizen-
ship education (2015: 83, 101). This observation applies to Asia in general.
Kennedy and Lee (2010) discuss that despite the liberalizing tendency in
education reforms primarily aimed to meet the needs of liberal economy in
Asia, ‘[t]here is not a single case in the region where the nation state has eased
its grip on citizenship education [that] continues to promote the supremacy
of the nation state’ (2010: 58). Similarly, a recent UNESCO study of 22 Asian
countries, including China and Japan, suggests that ‘reorienting education in
Asia [from fostering national identity] towards global citizenship is a daunt-
ing task’ (UNESCO MGIEP 2017: 11). Indeed, Kennedy and Lee (2010) predict
that GCE in Asian schools ‘is likely to be as elusive in the future as it is in the
present’ (2010: 62), suggesting that a substantial challenge facing school citi-
zenship education in Asia is how to remain nationally oriented on one hand
and to respond to inevitable global involvement and interdependence on the
other hand.
This study is an attempt to help address that challenge in the Japanese and
Chinese cases. Taking one step forward from the critical appraisals of Japanese
and Chinese citizenship education in the literature represented by those
mentioned above, this article explores how to advance the agenda of global
citizenship while bearing in mind the national dominance in Japanese and
Chinese school citizenship education. Furthermore, the exploration is based
on a list of global citizen attributes derived from a theoretical account of the
concept of global citizenship. It links the theoretical debates of global citizen-
ship to the research on Japanese and Chinese citizenship education, which
tends to report the rise of global elements in citizenship education policies,
curricula and textbooks without theoretically elaborating the relation of those
elements to the concept of global citizenship (e.g. Fujiwara 2011; Iwata 2011;
Law 2006; Lee and Ho 2008; Mori and Davies 2015; Tse 2011).

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

The prospect for global citizenship might be ‘daunting’ in the two cases
alike, given not merely its subordinate status to national citizenship as intro-
duced above, but more fundamentally, the centralized education systems more
or less in Japan and China, which render education policy-making tight in
the grip of respective central governments active in bolstering national pride
in recent years (e.g. Ma 2018; Sieg 2019). However daunting, it is arguably
compelling to explore the capacity and potential for GCE so as to make it less
‘elusive’ in both cases, an imperative driven by both the international commit-
ment to GCE and the need to find educational approaches to countering the
public unfavourable sentiments against each other often fuelled by national-
ism in Japan and China (The Genron NPO 2016).
Exploring how to advance the agenda of global citizenship in national
citizenship education can be seen as an endeavour of searching for hope,
which, following Halpin (2003), is ‘a way of living prospectively in and engag-
ing purposefully with the past and present’ to ‘anticipate as well as prepare
the ground for something new’ (2003: 14–16). This search-for-hope endeavour
stands in contrast with four viewpoints regarding Japanese and Chinese citi-
zenship education. They are, to parallel the four enemies of hope identified by
Halpin (2003), cynicism that criticizes the dominance of national citizenship
education in Japan and China yet offers little solution to break the dominance;
fatalism that considers citizenship education as a province of the nation state
after all and thus inescapable from the state-centeredness and top–down
imposition of national citizenship; relativism that sees the centeredness of
nation in citizenship education as an Asian characteristic that ought not to be
balanced by more general human commitments; and finally, fundamentalism
that sees the primacy of nation as part of Asian traditions.
Seeing national curriculum as a hallmark of centralized education system,
this article explores the pedagogical capacity and potential for global citizen-
ship within the boundaries set by the latest (as of May 2020) Japanese and
Chinese national curriculum guidelines for school subjects generally seen as
the primary venues for citizenship education. Specifically, it follows a specific
list of global citizen attributes to investigate which attributes are supported
or otherwise in the two cases. The findings suggest that many attributes are
supported in the Japanese and Chinese guidelines, which, furthermore, leave
pedagogical potential for the development of unsupported others.
The following section will elaborate on the global citizenship conception
developed from Bhikhu Parekh’s globally oriented citizenship and specify a list
of global citizen attributes. The third section explains the data collection and
analysis, while the fourth section reports the results on whether and how each
of the attributes is supported or otherwise in the selected national curriculum
guidelines. The concluding section discusses the implications of the findings
at the policy level for GCE practice and research in Japan and China.

NEGOTIATING THE NATIONAL AND THE GLOBAL IN GLOBAL

CITIZENSHIP
Global citizenship is a multifaceted concept. Oxley and Morris (2013) help-
fully identified eight ‘conflicting and converging’ forms of global citizenship
in the literature (2013: 305): the political, moral, economic and cultural forms
based on the ideal of cosmopolitanism; and the social, critical, environmental
and spiritual forms that serve as advocacy for transnational activism, decon-
struction and transformation, environmentalism and faith-based humanism,

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Sicong Chen

respectively. Among them, political global citizenship advocating global

governance besides, beyond or without the nation state system is ‘the most
identifiable’ form because citizenship is a political concept (Oxley and Morris
2013: 307); and moral global citizenship highlighting a global ethic towards
all human beings is embedded in, or at least closely related to, all the other
conceptions, as implied by Oxley and Morris (2013). For space reasons, this
article limits the scope of global citizenship to the political and the moral,
arguably two most primary forms, leaving the exploration of other forms in
Japanese and Chinese citizenship education to future research.
There is no lack of controversy over political and moral global citizenship
(Heater 2002). Critics of the moral form tend to argue that if we have duties
not merely to those intimate to us but also to the whole human community
as cosmopolitanism requires, the wider and, consequently, more distant latter
would be hard to cultivate or, at worst, erode the former. Critics of the political
form tend to insist that without a world state which is neither desirable nor
practicable, speaking of citizenship at the global level ignores and even under-
mines the fact that many, if not all, constituent elements of modern citizen-
ship, such as social and political rights, are, in theory and practice, provided
and protected by and made available only in the nation state. Amid controver-
sies over the moral and political capacities of global citizenship and concerns
over the tension with national citizenship, the notion of ‘globally oriented citi-
zenship’ proposed by Bhikhu Parekh can be seen as a conciliatory idea, which
maintains the political relevance of citizenship to the state while extending
the moral commitment to the global level. This conceptual conciliation opens
a way to advance the agenda of global citizenship while recognizing the
national dominance in Japanese and Chinese citizenship education.
Based on the reasoning that all human beings are of intrinsic and equal
worth, Parekh (2003) discusses that each person has two ‘distinct and mutu-
ally irreducible’ sets of moral duties, the ‘general duties’ to all human beings
because of common humanity and equal worth, and the ‘special duties’ to
‘those to whom we are bound by special ties’, from families and friends to
the national political community (2003: 6–7). The two sets of duties, accord-
ing to Parekh, ‘limit each other, and each […] does not frustrate the other’
(2003: 11). Complaining that global or cosmopolitan citizen as citizen of the
world ‘has no political home’, he proposes the idea of ‘globally oriented citi-
zen’, who ‘has a valued home of his [sic] own, from which he [sic] reaches out
to and forms different kinds of alliances with others having homes of their
own’ (2003: 12). He further explains that globally oriented citizenship is based
on neither cosmopolitanism nor nationalism but on ‘internationalism’, which
‘mediates’ between those two in the way that it allows the ‘redefining, reori-
enting and building’ on national political community, which as ‘a source of
moral and emotional energy’ can effectively and thus ‘best’ serve our ‘wider
moral purposes’ (2003: 12). In short, Parekh’s globally oriented citizenship
treats the general moral duties to common humanity as the necessary exten-
sion of the special duties to various special relations and expects the former to
be fulfilled in the established national political community.
Parekh’s realistic or pragmatic approach of carrying out our general moral
duties to humanity in national establishments is sensible in that it concili-
ates the increased global moral concerns and the continuing state-dependent
political conditions of citizenship, though to what extent the latter can facili-
tate rather than frustrate the former in practice requires more evidence. In this
approach government-controlled public school as an established institution

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

in, and often for, the nation state retains a critical role in advancing the moral
duties to humanity. But Parekh’s classification of moral duties into ‘general’
and ‘special’ with the former being the extension of the latter is arguably less
plausible. It not only raises thorny questions, such as which is to be served
first in case of conflict between general and special duties, but more essen-
tially, misses the fact that those to whom we have special ties are also human
beings and thus neglects the inherent connection of special to general duties.
Perhaps a more plausible way of understanding the moral duties is to treat
our duties to humanity as fundamental, on the basis of which we have addi-
tional moral duties to those with whom we have special ties. This alternative
thinking allows us to recognize the connection between Parekh’s general and
special duties, not only bringing in the ground layer of humanity to protect
shirked special duties and to condemn blind and aggressive ones, but also
opening up the horizon for us to fulfil any potential additional duties without
the need of moral justification each time to dispel the fear that our common
moral duties to humanity may be ignored or violated.
This alternative understanding of moral duties is not new, of course. The
recognition that humanity is the basis for special relations is a central theme
of the Stoic tradition – a school of philosophy in ancient times that first theo-
rized the idea of kosmopolitēs, literally ‘world citizen’. The Stoics believed that,
as Nussbaum (1997) explains and endorses, ‘we should give our first alle-
giance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral
community made up by the humanity of all human beings’ (1997: 59, empha-
sis added). The Stoics did not require us to abandon the contingent, the local
or the special. According to Nussbaum (1997), the Stoics were aware that ‘love
for what is near [is] a fundamental human trait, and a highly rational way
to comport oneself as a citizen’, but insisting that ‘there is something more
fundamental about us than the place where we happen to find ourselves,
and that this more fundamental basis of citizenship is shared across all divi-
sions’ (1997: 61, emphasis added). Similarly, Sen (2002) discusses that giving
humanity our first and most fundamental allegiance does not mean that it is
necessarily the ‘exclusive allegiance’ (2002: 112); rather, it provides us ‘grounds
for giving some additional weight to the interests of those who are linked to
us in some significant way’ through ‘supplementary allegiance’ (2002: 114,
emphasis added).
It can be discussed that Parekh’s globally oriented citizenship with orig-
inally special and extended general moral duties is citizenship oriented
towards the global from the national. By contrast, if we see our moral duties
as constitutive of fundamental and additional ones while preserving Parekh’s
pragmatic approach of advancing our moral duties to humanity in the national
political community, then globally oriented citizenship could alternatively
mean citizenship oriented towards the global through the national. This alter-
native interpretation considers the national community, following Parekh, as
an established and significant arena of influence and practice for humanity
and, diverting from Parekh, as one of many additional allegiances built upon
humanity. It is this alternative interpretation of globally oriented citizenship
that this study calls global citizenship and attempts to advance it in Japanese
and Chinese citizenship education.
After explaining the moral and political scope of global citizenship in this
article, it is now able to specify what needs to be cultivated for such global
citizenship. Parekh (2003) suggests three aspects important for his globally
oriented citizenship:

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• awareness and skills of examining national policies to ensure that they do

not harm and, if resources allow, promote human well-being at large;
• interest in and knowledge about affairs of other countries; and
• commitment to creating a just world order, which in turn requires the
awareness of cultural diversity, the attitude of sympathy and empathy, and
the ability of active and critical dialogue with others.

These aspects, the second and third ones in particular, are also considered
necessary by Nussbaum (1997, 2002) in her account of education for world
citizenship, which indeed inspires and shares with the present study the
viewpoint that the moral duties to humanity are not the extended but the
first and most fundamental. It is thus necessary to introduce two points in
her suggestion for world citizenship education to modify Parekh’s first aspect
above. First, Nussbaum (2002) suggests that education, or more precisely
what she called cosmopolitan education, should help students to look at the
nation ‘through the lens of the other’ so as to realize what is ‘local and nones-
sential’ and what is ‘more broadly or deeply shared’ (2002: 11). This sugges-
tion requires students to be self-reflexive on the nation. This attitude would
lead students to question those national policies that may not directly harm
humanity but help imagine, construct and maintain the uniqueness inside and
the otherness outside of the nation. Such questioning would, in turn, demyth-
icize the nation-aroused ‘moral and emotional energy’ taken for granted by
Parekh. Second, Nussbaum also suggests that education should help students
to develop the consciousness and knowledge to ‘most seriously consider the
right of other human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ in
‘making choices in both political and economic matters’ (2002: 13–14). This
means that the moral concern to humanity should serve not merely as an
external constraint to ensure that national policies do no harm and, when
possible, promote human well-being, but as an internal principle in local and
national deliberations and arrangements. In other words, local and national
interests should be oriented towards humanity.
Drawing upon the notion of globally oriented citizenship proposed by
Parekh (2003) with modifications inspired by Nussbaum (1997, 2002) and
Sen (2002), this section has explained the global moral concern and national
political approach in the global citizenship conception endorsed in this arti-
cle. Table 1 categorizes the corresponding global citizen attributes. The follow-
ing sections will proceed to select and analyse Japanese and Chinese national
curriculum guidelines to investigate whether and how the attributes are
supported or otherwise.

DATA
Both Japanese and Chinese central governments lay down national curric-
ulum guidelines – the courses of study (gakushū shidō yōryō) in Japan and
the curriculum standards (kecheng biaozhun) in China – for subjects taught in
primary and secondary education. As the most authoritative and systematic
description of official views on what to teach, and what not to teach by impli-
cation, in schools nationwide, national curriculum provides a vantage point
to observe the official curricular boundaries and explore how to advance GCE
within the boundaries. This study selected for analysis the latest guidelines for
subjects generally seen as the primary venues for citizenship education in the
primary and secondary education stages in Japan and China. Table 2 lists the
selected subject-specific guidelines.

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

Knowledge and awareness Skill and ability Attitude and commitment

A: Knowledge of national a: Skill of examining national 1: Attitude of sympathy and empathy
policies policies 2: Reflexive attitude towards one’s own
B: Knowledge of international b: Ability of active dialogue nation
affairs 3: Commitment to a just world order

C: Awareness of cultural c: Ability of critical dialogue 4: Commitment to giving humanity

diversity the first and most fundamental moral
concern
Table 1:  Global citizen attributes.

National Education stage (declaration year

curriculum of the latest version as of May 2020) Subject or subject area
A: Courses of a: Primary (2017) 1: Social studies (shakai); 2: moral studies
study (Japan) (dōtoku)†
b: Lower secondary (2017) 1: Social studies (shakai) with three divisions,
geography (chiri), history (rekishi) and civics
(kōmin); 2: moral studies (dōtoku)†
c: Upper secondary (2018) 1: Civics (kōmin) with three subjects, public
(kōkyō), ethics (rinri) and politics and
economics (seiji keizai)
B: Curriculum a: Primary (2011) 1: Moral character and life (pinde yu
standards (China) shenghuo, for 1–2 grades); 2: moral character
and society (pinde yu shehui, for 3–6 grades)
b: Lower secondary (2011) 1: Thought and moral character (sixiang pinde)
c: Upper secondary (2017) 1: Thought and politics (sixiang zhengzhi)
*
Each national curriculum guideline is identified with a code in the article. For example, Aa1 is the code for the
Japanese guideline for the subject social studies in primary education.
†
The 2017 primary and lower secondary courses of study upgraded moral education hitherto taught informally to
moral studies, a formal (with textbooks and evaluation) and special (with no requirement of qualification to teach)
subject.
Table 2:  Subject-specific national curriculum guidelines selected for analysis.*

National curriculum is subject to periodic official review and revision. In

the Japanese case, the latest courses of study for primary and lower second-
ary education, developed from the ones in place since 2008, were published
in 2017, while the latest courses of study for upper secondary education to
replace the 2009 ones were released in 2018. In the Chinese case, while the
curriculum standards for upper secondary education were renewed in 2017,
those for primary and lower secondary education remain unchanged, at the
time of writing, from the versions last updated in 2011. But revisions are likely
to come soon, particularly for the three guidelines Ba1, Ba2 and Bb1. For their
subject titles have been uniformly renamed as morality and law (daode yu
fazhi) since 2016, becoming one of the three subjects – Chinese and history
being the other two – required to use, exclusively and countrywide, the text-
books commissioned by the Ministry of Education and published by the
People’s Education Press under it from 2017, a move considered as another

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evidence of the tightening state control on education. This is in contrast with

the availability of textbooks published by multiple publishing houses, though
still subject to government approval, in Japan.
I employed the qualitative and evaluative text analysis to identify each of
the attributes listed in Table 1 in the curriculum guidelines. The reason for qual-
itative other than quantitative analysis is that even just one mention in the text
is considered significant in the authoritative national curriculum guidelines.
Consulting the evaluative text analysis process suggested by Kuckartz (2014)
and treating each attribute as an evaluative category, I identified and coded text
passages that were relevant to each category at three levels: positive relevance,
potentially positive relevance and negative relevance. Specifically, what coded
as positive relevance were direct expressions of, or specific requirements in
direct relation to, the development of the category; what coded as potentially
positive relevance were requirements of knowledge, skill or attitude consid-
ered contributable to the development of the category; and what coded as
negative relevance were requirements of knowledge, skill or attitude consid-
ered hindering the development of the category. After coding, I compared the
results in the three education stages within and between the categories and
further between the Japanese and Chinese cases. The next section reports the
analysis results on individual attributes.

RESULTS
Knowledge of, and skill of examining, national policies
The Japanese guidelines mention and approach the knowledge about national
policies from different directions and across the three education stages. The
Aa1 spells out the teaching of the procedural mechanism of national and local
policy-making in contemporary Japan in sixth grade – a point newly added
in the 2017 version; the Ab1 lays out a number of teaching points on specific
policies in pre-modern and modern Japan, such as the industrialization policy
in the Meiji era; and, extending from the Ab1, the Ac1 highlights the under-
standing of democracy in the Japanese political system and the role of govern-
ment in the market. Similarly, concrete requirements for particular national
policies are scattered in the Chinese case. The Ba2 mentions the knowledge of
national laws and regulations concerning youth and children; the Bb1 high-
lights national policies about sustainable development; and the Bc1 empha-
sizes the understanding of Chinese socialism and rule by law (fazhi). It appears
that the guidelines are similarly supportive of the development of knowledge
of national policies.
Knowledge of policies does not spontaneously lead to the skill of examin-
ing policies, which is ignored yet has the potential to develop in both Japanese
and Chinese guidelines. Specifically, while the knowledge about the proce-
dural mechanism of policy-making is newly required, such knowledge is
intended for students to ‘consider’ (kangae) and ‘explain’ (hyōgen) the politi-
cal life of national citizens (Aa1), stopping short of using such knowledge to
examine policies or the policy-making procedure itself. Similarly, although the
understanding of Chinese socialism is a key component of the Bc1, students
are required to ‘identify’ (rentong) with and ‘adhere’ (jianchi) to the particu-
lar political ideology rather than openly examine it without predetermined
conclusion. While not mentioned in the guidelines, policy examination is
arguably an important component of, and thus the teaching and learning of
it may be justified in the name of, political participation, which is stressed in

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

both Japanese and Chinese cases. In the Japanese case, the understanding of
democracy and political participation is repeatedly highlighted (Ab1 and Ac1),
to the extent that there is even a new compulsory subject called Public (kōkyō)
set up in the subject area civics with the explicit aim to systematically prepare
students for participation in the public life (Ac1). In the same upper second-
ary stage on the Chinese side, public participation is posited as one of the
four core competencies (besides political identification, scientific spirit, aware-
ness of rule by law) in the recently renewed Bc1, whose compulsory module
‘Politics and Rule by Law’ (zhengzhi yu fazhi) sets itself the aim to develop
students’ ability to ‘orderly participate’ (youxu canyu) in political and social
affairs. The expressed requirement for political participation may provide a
rationale for developing the skill of examining policies, while the accentuation
on order and political identification implies that the potential is slim for criti-
cal policy examination in the Chinese case.

Knowledge of international affairs

The need to develop knowledge of international affairs, like knowledge of
national policies, is also voiced, either relevantly or directly, in the guidelines in
both cases. In the Japanese case, primary students in sixth grade are required
in the Aa1 to know and understand the role played by Japan in the United
Nations in terms of international aid and cooperation, which would inevitably
relate to issues beyond Japan. More directly, the Ab1 contains sessions about
communities around the world in the geography division, about the connec-
tions of Japan with Asia and the world in the history division, and about issues
concerning the international community in the civics division. Furthermore,
the Ac1 requires upper secondary students to take an active role in the sustain-
able development of the international community in the new subject Public,
while assigning half of the contents in the subject Politics and Economics to
issues in the international community.
Many of these topics are similarly covered in the Chinese guidelines. The
Ba2 includes contents about the economic connections between China and
the wider world and the role and increased influence of China in international
organizations, while the Bb1 requires students to understand the develop-
ments in the contemporary world and the position, potential and challenges
of China in it. Very much like its Japanese counterpart, the Bc1 contains a
module called ‘Contemporary International Politics and Economics’ to teach
international issues.
The analysis suggests that both Japanese and Chinese national curric-
ula have specific goals for knowledge of international affairs from primary
to secondary, particularly in the upper secondary, stages. However, it is, as
shown above, the nation that serves as the central pillar around which the
knowledge of international affairs is revolved and required. In other words,
the development of this knowledge is oriented towards the national rather
than the global. This observation corresponds to the results below concerning
the reflexive attitude towards the nation and the commitment to humanity.

Awareness of cultural diversity

This is another attribute found to be expressed and supported, though again
not without concern, in the selected guidelines. The Aa1 expresses the aim for
sixth-grade students to understand and respect the diversity of life in countries
of close economic and cultural connections to Japan and to ‘capture’ (torae)

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the cultural and customary differences between Japan and other countries. A
similar understanding is required in the geography division of the Ab1, with
emphasis on religion and the diversity of life and environment around the
world. Cultural diversity itself is not treated as an independent aim in the Ac1,
which nevertheless mentions in the topic of economic globalization about the
cultural and religious diversity and the mutual respect and tolerance between
cultures. Corresponding to the awareness of cultural diversity, the guideline
for the newly formalized subject moral studies lays out a set of specific goals
for primary education:

[Prepare students] to be familiar with people and cultures of other coun-

tries (1-2 grades); to be familiar with and concerned about people and
cultures of other countries (3-4 grades); and to understand people and
cultures of other countries so as to contribute to international friendship
with the consciousness of being Japanese (5-6 grades).
(Aa2, translation author’s own)

Similarly, it is in the primary stage that the awareness of cultural diversity is

most clearly required in the Chinese case. Knowledge of and respect for differ-
ent lifestyles and customs in different conditions are listed as part of the over-
all objective in the category of knowledge and attitude in the Ba2, which also
mentions the need to understand and respect the cultures of ethnic minorities
in China and the cultural diversity in different parts of the world. The need is
repeated and complemented with an equal attitude towards different cultures
in the Bb1. With no mention of the cultural diversity within China, the Bc1
requires students to experience and understand cultural diversity in the world
and to explore the approaches and implications about cultural exchanges.
The analysis suggests that both Japanese and Chinese national guide-
lines embrace not only the awareness of but also the respect for cultural
diversity. Yet cultural diversity in the nation seems to be little recognized as
opposed to cultural diversity between nations in both cases. Cultural diversity
expressed in the guidelines, as illustrated by the quotation above, tends to
be oversimplified as differences between foreign and national cultures, with
the former being portrayed as heterogeneous to the presumedly homogene-
ous latter. One evidence is that the requirement for the understanding of and
respect for cultural diversity is often stated in sessions about the nation and
the outside world in both Japanese and Chinese guidelines. Another evidence
is that in the Japanese case there is no single mention of cultural diversity in
the Japanese society, while in the Chinese case, despite that cultures of ethnic
minorities in China are mentioned in the primary and lower secondary guide-
lines, they are replaced by the emblems of ‘Chinese culture’ (zhonghua wenhua)
vis-à-vis ‘outer culture’ (yuwai wenhua) in the upper secondary guideline (Bc1).
Behind the support for the awareness of cultural diversity lies the tendency
to oversimplify cultural diversity as differences between national and foreign
cultures in both Japanese and Chinese cases.

Ability of active dialogue

While direct expressions of this ability are found in the Chinese case but
not in the Japanese case, both similarly refer to the development of active
attitude arguably essential to this ability. In the Japanese case, students are
required to develop the ‘active’ (shutaiteki) attitude to address social issues for

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

a better society from the primary fifth and sixth grades (Aa1) throughout to
the lower and upper secondary stages (Ab1 and Ac1). Similarly, ‘active’ (jiji)
life and social attitude is required from primary to secondary education in the
Chinese case. Furthermore, there are expressions of active dialogue in the Ba2
and Bb1, with the former requiring students to clearly ‘express’ (biaoda) self, to
‘listen to’ (qingting), ‘understand’ (tihui) and ‘communicate’ (jiaoliu) with others
on equal terms, and the latter mentioning active ‘exchange’ (jiaowang, goutong)
with classmates, friends, adults and teachers in particular.

Ability of critical dialogue

No direct expression of critical dialogue is found, but the critical attitude seems
to be suggested peripherally in the Japanese and peculiarly in the Chinese
guidelines. On the Japanese side, appearing not in the guidelines but in the
supplementary documents interpreting the guidelines, the ‘critical’ (hihanteki)
viewpoint or attitude is required for lower secondary students to engage in
public life (Ab1) and in the subject moral studies in the primary and lower
secondary stages (Aa2 and Ab2). The absence in the guidelines itself suggests
that the critical attitude is not fully recognized and supported. On the Chinese
side, the critical attitude is referred to only once on the occasion that lower
secondary students are required to have the skill to ‘criticize’ (piping) informa-
tion from mass media, the Internet in particular (Bb1). This suggests that criti-
cal skill is far from being fully supported, at least not when examining national
policies as shown above or considering the official construct of the nation to
be discussed soon.

Attitude of sympathy and empathy

Sympathy connotes the ability to understand and share the feelings of others,
while empathy, taking one step further, connotes, following Calloway-Thomas
(2010), the ability to imagine the feelings of others. In the Japanese case,
‘sympathy’ (omoiyari) is included in the list of values for students to develop
in the subject moral studies in both primary and lower secondary stages (Aa2
and Ab2). The Aa2 even specifically requires students of fifth and sixth grades
to be sympathetic towards anyone and stand in ‘the position of others’ (aite
no tachiba), which is similar to empathy. Sympathy and empathy are also
expressed in the Chinese case. The Ba2 mentions the aim for students to be
‘sympathetic’ (you tongqingxin) towards minority groups, while the Bb1 requires
students to learn to ‘think in other’s position’ (huanwei sikao). It appears that
the attribute of sympathy and empathy is expressly supported, once again
similarly, in the Chinese and Japanese guidelines.

Reflexive attitude towards one’s own nation

The reflexive attitude of looking at the nation through the lens of others is
not found in the Japanese guidelines. The aim of educating students to ‘love’
(aisuru) the nation is clearly stated in all selected guidelines, with the Aa1
and Ab1 focusing on the love for the nation’s land and history, the Aa2 and
Ab2 on the love for its customs and culture, and the Ac1 on the love derived
from national citizenship. Furthermore, the aim of loving the nation is accom-
panied by the requirement to have ‘the self-consciousness of being Japanese’
(nihonjin toshite no jikaku). Such clear and repeated expressions indicate that
what the guidelines aim to develop is the loyal rather than reflexive attitude
towards the nation, though the two do not necessarily stand against each

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other in theory. It is interesting to find that the guidelines (Aa1, Ab1 and Ac1)
suggest the love for the nation to be cultivated through ‘multidimensional and
multi-perspective’ (tamenteki, takakuteki) social observation. It is intriguing
whether observing national history, customs and culture in such way would
engender the loyalty to the nation or counterproductively halt the effort by
diluting the validity of the officially constructed image of the nation and invit-
ing alternative interpretations that would enable one to perceive the nation
through other lenses than the one imposed by the state. It seems that while
the reflexive attitude towards the nation is not what the Japanese national
guidelines aim to develop, there nevertheless is pedagogical potential, that
is, the multidimensional and multi-perspective observation, to develop the
reflexive attitude.
Such potential seems to also exist, but to a much lesser extent, in the
Chinese case. To ‘love the nation’ (ai zuguo) with proudness and belongingness
is a central tenet in the analysed Chinese national guidelines from primary to
lower secondary stages, while to identify with the political ideology of ‘social-
ism with Chinese characteristics’ and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party
is postulated as a core competency in the upper secondary stage. These serve
as evidence that similar to the Japanese counterpart, it is the loyal rather than
reflexive attitude towards the nation dictated by official narratives that the
national curricula are tasked to instil. Unlike the Japanese case, no particular
pedagogical approach is highlighted, although history – the official version, of
course – is occasionally suggested as a resource. Given the single mention of
‘observation from different perspectives’ (cong butong de jiaodu guancha) in the
overall objective in terms of skills in the Aa2, it seems that at least in primary
education there is pedagogical potential within the curricular boundary to
develop the reflexive attitude towards the nation in the Chinese case.

Commitment to a just world order

It is beyond the scope of this article to elaborate on the multifaceted and
contested concept of justice and its application as a principle of world order.
Rather, the focus here is simply on whether justice, however defined, is
mentioned and required at the global level in the national guidelines. It is
found that while justice or equity is explicitly perceived as a necessary social
value in both Japanese and Chinese cases, the global scope is only briefly
implied in the former and absent throughout the latter.
In the Japanese guidelines, ‘equity, fairness, social justice’ (kōsei, kōhei,
shakai seigi) is listed in the subject moral studies as one cluster of group and
social values to be taught in the primary and lower secondary stages (Aa2
and Ab2); and the cluster of ‘happiness, justice, equity’ (kōfuku, seigi, kōsei) is
posed as the focus of the active public engagement for a better society in the
upper secondary stage (Ac1). These clusters do not appear in sections related
to international issues in any of the guidelines, except that the second cluster
is repeated to be the aim of developing a sustainable society from local to
international in the Ac1. This implies that while the Japanese society is the
presumed context in which justice is called for in the guidelines, the view of
justice in the international context is not completely lost. But even such subtle
implication is not found in the Chinese case.
In the Chinese guidelines, ‘fairness’ (gongping) and ‘equity’ (gongzheng) are
part of the overall objective in terms of values in the Ba2, with the latter also
being mentioned in the overall objective in the Bb1. The subject content speci-
fied in the Bb1 shows that it requires students ‘to have the sense of justice’ (you

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 Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China

zhengyigan) in group life and ‘to maintain social equity’ (weihu shehui gongz-
heng). Fairness and justice are also mentioned in the national legal context in
the Bc1. Similar to the Japanese ones, the Chinese guidelines see justice as a
necessary value for collective and social life in the national community. What
is different from the Japanese case is, however, not merely that there is no
expression of justice in the early primary education (Ba1), but that even indi-
rect reference to justice beyond the nation state is not found in the Chinese
guidelines, with the upper secondary one even stating at one point that
national interest and national power are the main factors in international rela-
tions (Bc1). The little or no mention of justice in the global context suggests
the lack of interest in the commitment to a just world order in the Chinese and
Japanese guidelines. Nevertheless, the value of justice certainly emphasized in
the guidelines perhaps could serve as a breakpoint to extend the commitment
to justice beyond the nation state in the two cases.

Commitment to giving humanity the first and most fundamental

moral concern
One might see the lack of interest in the commitment to a just world order
as a presage that humanity is not given the first and most fundamental moral
concern in the Chinese and Japanese national guidelines. This is indeed the
case, not merely because no expression about the commitment is found in the
guidelines. More fundamentally, it is because the nation state is the primary
reference point from and towards which objectives and contents are oriented,
as shown in the results above. Giving humanity the first and most funda-
mental moral concern does not necessarily require the abandon of national
allegiance (Nussbaum 1997; Sen 2002); and the established national politi-
cal community could serve as an important arena in which our moral duties
to humanity are fulfilled (Parekh 2003). Yet when the nation state remains
both the means and end in the national curriculum guidelines and oppor-
tunities to critically examine the nation state are largely absent, it would be
difficult to uphold our allegiance to humanity, let alone giving it the first and
most fundamental moral concern. Having said that, there may still be peda-
gogical potential for the commitment. In particular, the attitude of sympathy
and empathy similarly required for in the Japanese and Chinese guidelines
may contribute to cultivating moral concern for people not merely in but also
beyond the nation state.

CONCLUSION
This article attempts to advance global citizenship in the dominant national
citizenship education in Japan and China. From the standpoint of a particu-
lar conception of global citizenship developed from Bhikhu Parekh’s globally
oriented citizenship, the analysis of selected national curriculum guidelines
found that the Japanese and Chinese guidelines similarly support, or at least
leave pedagogical potential for, the development of all attributes. Specifically,
the attributes whose development is expressed and supported, though not
without concern, are the knowledge of national policies and international
affairs, the awareness of cultural diversity, and the attitude of sympathy and
empathy; the attributes unexpressed but left pedagogical potential for devel-
opment are the skill of examining national policies, the abilities of active and
critical dialogue, the reflexive attitude towards the nation, the commitment to

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Sicong Chen

a just to a just world order, and the commitment to giving humanity the first
and most fundamental moral concern.
The Chinese and Japanese cases are found to be similar in being support-
ive or otherwise of the development of global citizen attributes. A notable
exception is the commitment to a just world order, the development of which
is briefly implied in the Japanese case but unfound in the Chinese case. This
article leaves to future research the question of what factors are behind the
similarity. Furthermore, as this article explored and compared through the lens
of a particular – and, some might argue, western – global citizenship concep-
tion, future research needs to further examine Japanese and Chinese GCE
with other global citizenship conceptions.
The similarity found in this article offers two pedagogical suggestions
within the curricular boundaries set by the national curricula for promoting
GCE, which is oriented towards the global through the national, in Japanese
and Chinese schools. But before turning to the suggestions, it is important to
keep in mind the diverse and dynamic social, political and cultural contexts
in and between Japan and China, which inexorably influence the scope and
content of GCE perceived and practiced in schools, the interplay between
the enforced outcomes in the national curricula and the enacted outcomes in
schools, and the extent to which voices from schools are involved in education
policy-making. The first suggestion is to critically facilitate the development
of expressed and supported attributes. This includes drawing attention to the
cultural complexities not merely between but within the nation state in the
teaching of cultural diversity and directing the concern from national interest
to global justice in the teaching of national policies and international affairs.
The second suggestion is to consciously make use of the pedagogical potential
identified in this study to help students develop those attributes unexpressed
and unsupported in the guidelines. This includes developing the skill of exam-
ining national policies in the teaching of political participation, the abilities
of active and critical dialogue in the teaching of active and critical attitudes,
the reflexive attitude towards the nation in the teaching of multi-perspective
consideration, the commitment to a just world order in the teaching of the
value of justice, and the commitment to giving humanity our first and most
fundamental moral concern in the teaching of sympathy and empathy.
This study confirms the national dominance in Japanese and Chinese
citizenship education widely reported in the literature, to which this study
contributes by following a conciliatory conception of global citizenship to
identify specific pedagogical capacity and potential for GCE in the national
curricula. The findings call for further empirical and comparative study to
investigate to what extent Japanese and Chinese schoolteachers accept the
global citizenship conception and the corresponding attributes endorsed in
this study and how to support them to implement the two suggestions. Hope
is about engaging with the present to prepare for a better future. The identi-
fied pedagogical capacity and potential remind us of the need to retain a sense
of optimism in engaging with the unsatisfactory present for a desirable future
of GCE in Japan and China.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Chen, Sicong (2020), ‘Advancing global citizenship education in Japan
and China: An exploration and comparison of the national curri-
cula’, Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 15:3, pp. 341–356, doi: https://doi.
org/10.1386/ctl_00038_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Sicong Chen is an associate professor at the Department of Education, Kyushu
University, Japan. His research interest is citizenship education in East Asian
contexts. He is the author of The Meaning of Citizenship in Contemporary
Chinese Society: An Empirical Study through Western Lens (Springer, 2018).
Contact: Department of Education, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku
Fukuoka, 819-0395, Japan.
E-mail: [email protected]

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9443-4859

Sicong Chen has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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