Comparative Education in China

Abstract

The emergence of comparative education as a distinct area of scientific inquiry in educational studies is a twentieth-century phenomenon; in China, it has a shorter history and is only at an initial stage of development. In an age of internationalization, however, and during a new period when China is striving for modernization and unswervingly following a policy of opening to the outside world, comparative and international education has been attracting increasingly wide attention and interest in this old civilization. Deng Xiao-ping, one of the highest-ranking Chinese leaders, recently pointed out, Education should face modernization, face the world, and face the future.' This is illustrative of the new orientation of Chinese educational development and of the role that comparative education is to play. The goal of Chinese educators is to build a socialist educational system that suits China's conditions. Yet we are fully aware that no nation can hope to develop in isolation and that rational, overall educational planning and policy can be effectively made only from a broad, comparative perspective. As problems in national educational development can be better understood and solved in the light of both positive and negative experiences of other countries, comparative education is now playing an important role in China.