Chinese Citizen or Global Citizen? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism at an International School in Beijing

Abstract

International education is a popular educational strategy among middle-class and affluent families in China and is pursued at increasingly younger ages. Yet, we do not know the implications of this family strategy for the identities and worldviews of privileged Chinese youth and what this may mean for the future of the Chinese nation-state, given the important role of the middle and affluent classes in the trajectory of a nation. To investigate this question, the current study draws on data collected at two high schools that cater to socioeconomically advantaged Chinese families: an international school in Beijing and a standard curriculum school in neighboring Tianjin. Despite unusually high levels of international travel and contact with non-Chinese groups, students at the international school were markedly similar to their counterparts at the standard curriculum school in identities and worldviews. Overall, findings suggest that families that engage with international education for strategic purposes cultivate mundane and strategic forms of cosmopolitanism in their children, as opposed to moral-ideological cosmopolitanism or a sense of global citizenship. Consequently, this study raises issues with arguments that international education will result in more globally-oriented individuals, and with theories that pit the forces of globalization and cosmopolitanism against the nation-state.