A timely, original study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in contemporary urban China, which draws 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 Shanghai, China. Drawing on rich, ethnographic data, this book debunks many popular and scholarly stereotypes about the predominance of Confucian ideas of parental authority in China or about the indifference to individual human rights in the political and public culture of the PRC. This book also recognizes the complexities and conflicts that exist in Chinese discourses about and practices toward children, as older ideas of filiality, neoliberal ideologies, and the new awareness of children's right to privacy, to expressing their views, and to protection against violence compete and collude in complicated, often contradictory ways.

Chinese childhood is undergoing a major transformation. This book explores how government policies introduced in China over the last few decades and processes of social and economic change are reshaping the lives of children and the meanings of childhood in complex, contradictory ways. Drawing on a broad range of literature and original ethnographic research, Naftali explores the rise of new ideas of child-care, child-vulnerability and child-agency; the impact of the One-Child Policy; and the emergence of children as independent consumers in the new market economy. She shows that Chinese boys and increasingly girls, too are enjoying a new empowerment, a development that has met with ambiguity and resistance from both caregivers and the state. She also demonstrates how economic restructuring and the recent waves of rural/urban migration have produced starkly unequal conditions for children s education and development both in the countryside and in the cities. Children in China is essential reading for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be a child in contemporary China, as well as for those concerned with the changing relationship between children, the state and the family in the global era.

Chinese childhood is undergoing a major transformation. This book explores how government policies introduced in China over the last few decades and processes of social and economic change are reshaping the lives of children and the meanings of childhood in complex, contradictory ways. Drawing on a broad range of literature and original ethnographic research, Naftali explores the rise of new ideas of child-care, child-vulnerability and child-agency; the impact of the One-Child Policy; and the emergence of children as independent consumers in the new market economy. She shows that Chinese boys and increasingly girls, too are enjoying a new empowerment, a development that has met with ambiguity and resistance from both caregivers and the state. She also demonstrates how economic restructuring and the recent waves of rural/urban migration have produced starkly unequal conditions for children s education and development both in the countryside and in the cities. Children in China is essential reading for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be a child in contemporary China, as well as for those concerned with the changing relationship between children, the state and the family in the global era.

This book is an original, ethnographic study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in urban China. It brings together evidence from a variety of Chinese government, academic, pedagogic and media publications, and from interviews and participant observations conducted in schools and homes in Shanghai, China.