Discourses of Citizenship Compared: Junior High School Knowledge in Mainland China and Taiwan

Configurations of citizenship are often reflected in school knowledge which contains normative and pedagogical discourses. Changes in the citizenship curriculum also capture the socio-political transition of a society. Drawing on textual and content analysis, this article presents a comparative analysis of the relevant textbooks at the junior high level in Mainland China and Taiwan in the late 1990s with regard to the portrait of a good citizen. It is concluded that the mainland’s materials, combining socialist and republican models of citizenship, tend to teach their students to be patriots with good psychological quality, legal compliance, moral integrity, lofty ideals, an enterprising spirit and a distinguished sense of social responsibility for “socialist modernization construction” and national revival, while Taiwan’s materials, more in a manner of liberalism and communitarianism, emphasize personhood, human rights values, public spiritedness, and civic competence, which lay a foundation for sustaining a budding democracy and civil society.