The Chinese education system is characterized as highly meritocratic and examination-oriented. Scores in high-stakes public standardized examinations mainly determine upward educational transitions. Private tutoring classes (PTCs) are a typical measure to boost students’ academic achievement. Mental health is also assumed to affect one’s behaviors and educational outcomes, playing a key role in the stratification process. However, few studies discuss (1) the bidirectional relationship between PTC attendance and emotional well-being, and (2) the role of academic achievement in determining PTC attendance and moderating the relationship between the two variables. This study fills these gaps by analyzing the 2013–14 and 2014–15 waves of data from the China Educational Panel Survey. Using a cross-lagged model, the author only finds a positive association between prior emotional well-being and later PTC attendance. Moreover, the positive association between students’ prior academic achievement and their later PTC attendance suggests that PTCs tend to serve higher-performing students. Examining the heterogeneity of the bidirectional relationship in terms of academic achievement, the author finds that only low-achievers follow a similar pattern as shown in the full sample model. This study will enrich the understanding on how mental health together with PTCs attendance contributes to the educational stratification process.

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.

Differences in socioeconomic status have long been one of the major contributing factors to household educational investment, which is also a key concern in related research. Utilizing Panel Study of Family Dynamics (PSFD) datasets from 2003 to 2004, in this study we examine family investment in children’s education in southeast China and Taiwan, two core economic players in east Asia, with mainland China presenting much more social inequality than Taiwan, based on Gini coefficient measures. Our findings reveal that the different levels of parental investment in education are consistent with socioeconomic disparities, which vary significantly both quantitatively and qualitatively among mainland Chinese families from diverse social class backgrounds, but this gap appears to be narrowing among households in Taiwan. Parents’ level of education and income, deemed as the main class-based indicators, continue to be the determining factors in how families obtain and construct educational access, resources and opportunities for their offspring.

To explore senior high school students’ subjective socioeconomic status influence on their subjective well-being, and the role of self-esteem and peer relationships in it, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 394 high school students from the first grade to the third grade in Beijing using the Adolescent Subjective Socioeconomic Status Scale, Self-Esteem Scale, Adolescent Peer Relationship Scale, and Subjective Well-being Scale. The results show that: (1) Subjective socioeconomic status can positively predict subjective well-being; (2) Self-esteem and peer relationship play a completely mediating role in the relationship between subjective socioeconomic status and subjective well-being. Therefore, the improvement of high school students’ subjective well-being can be achieved through the dual path of intervening in students’ self-esteem level and improving their peer relationships.

The deficiency of educational resources is typically held as one of the major impediments to the educational development of Tibetans in China. Even though the Chinese state has committed to supportive policies and providing resources to the region, the academic performance of Tibetan students remains low. The current study examines how students’ family life affects their academic performance in schools. Based on the fieldwork in two Tibetan-serving boarding schools in Northwest China, we found that family absence and family education have a profound impact on Tibetan children’s academic learning. Drawing on the sociology of education literature, we analyzed the tri-factors of family socioeconomic status (SES), family structure, and values. Our analysis revealed that even with an increased level of resource input, family factors contributed to Tibetan students’ disappointing academic achievement. Our analysis suggested that well-intended educational policies cannot entirely substitute for the disadvantages caused by an absent family.

Forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation is an important innovative thesis put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping. It is a continuation, development, and innovation of Marxist ethnic theory with rich, deep content. Systematically looking at the key theories of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important accounts of forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation with regards to the background of the era, the significance of their status, the characteristics of their content, and their practical requirements and deeply studying and understanding their spiritual nature and practical requirements can promote the high-quality development of ethnic affairs work in the new era and unite the people of all ethnicities in commonly striving to realize the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation is the main line of ethnic affairs in the new era, and also a hot topic of research in theories about the Chinese nation today. The scientific connotations of education about forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation includes three aspects: conceptual content, theoretical content, and practical content. The core of the conceptual content lies in forging the conscious sense of community for the Chinese nation, to internalize the concept of national unity. The theoretical content includes the theory of ethnic affairs with Chinese characteristics in the new era and the theory of modernization of national governance. This focuses on the “discursive consciousness” of forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation to give national unity a sound basis. The practical content of forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation includes using education about national unity, national unification, and national rejuvenation to forge a sense of a united community for the Chinese nation, to make the ideal of national unity apparent in action. Only with a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the scientific content of education about the sense of community for the Chinese nation can we effectively implement the ideal of the community of the Chinese nation “that shares good or ill, that shares honour or disgrace, that shares life or death, and that shares a common destiny.”

The cause of ethnic unity progress is a foundational cause for forging a sense of community for the Chinese Nation, and progressive education for school ethnic unity is an important, integral part of the cause of ethnic unity progress. Progressive education curricula for school ethnic unity are school curricula explicitly stipulated by the state. It is an important, integral part of the system of school thought and politics curricula and a completely new curriculum form. Progressive education curricula for school ethnic unity plays a critical, important role in firmly establishing the correct view of the motherland, ethnicity, culture, and history for students of all ethnicities and is also a basic path and vehicle for building a common spiritual home for all ethnicities and firmly molding a consciousness of the community of the Chinese nation. There is a solid theoretical foundation, rich practical explorations, and real need for building progressive education curricula for school ethnic unity. Properly building a system of progressive education curricula for school ethnic unity with Chinese characteristics is an important responsibility for education workers in the new era.

The centralized compilation and use of educational materials for the three subjects of language arts, ethics and the rule of law (ideology and politics), and history are important moves in the fundamental task of creating educational materials to build up the state’s authority and instill virtue and nurturing the young. Here, centrally compiled educational materials for language arts have unique advantages with respect to strengthening education in the standard spoken and written Chinese language, enhancing the cohesion of the Chinese nation, and so on, and they play an irreplaceable role in forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation. Centered on the “Five Identifications,” this study sets out from the three-dimensional perspective of cognitive factors, affective factors and behavioral factors, to build a framework for analysis of educational materials based on the connotations of the sense of community for the Chinese nation. The characteristics of the representation of the connotative factors of the sense of community for the Chinese nation in centrally compiled educational materials for language arts are: The educational materials comprehensively and emphatically embody the educational content of the “Five Identifications”; the educational content for the different types of identification comprehensively addresses educational objectives in the three areas of cognition, affection and behavior; and educational content on cultural identification is the most enriched. Among the inherent mechanisms for forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation through the centralized compilation of educational materials for language arts, the first is organically integrating the connotative factors of the sense of community for the Chinese nation on the basis of the patterns of the subject of language arts as well as curriculum standards; the second is to use cultural identification as a focal point in promoting education for the “Five Identifications,” while highlighting the unique value of the subject of language arts; and the third is to comprehensively strengthen education for identification with the community of the Chinese nation centered on the text selection system, in combination with the design of form factors and educational activities. The main pathways for forging a sense of community for the Chinese nation through the centralized compilation of educational materials for language arts are: (1) Synchronously strengthening identification with the community of the Chinese nation in the process of improving students’ language arts skills and accomplishments, based on the learning situation; (2) Creating three-dimensional educational objectives for education in the community of the Chinese nation on the basis of cognitive patterns, to build firm ideological foundations; (3) Applying diverse teaching methods and educational techniques to promote consolidation of the sense of community for the Chinese nation in language arts studies and in life.