An important book, not only for scholars of moral and citizenship education, but for anyone interested in Chinese education today, and particularly those engaged in comparative and international studies. In this very readable account, Dr. Ye explores the dynamics of politics, power, and social change in the work of teachers and schools. Through three engaging school-based case studies, she considers the opportunities and tensions faced by those trying to bring about curriculum change in moral education, an area of the curriculum which remains highly politicised and of key importance to the Chinese state. This topical and accessible research deserves a wide readership.

Aubrey Osler, University of Leeds and Buskerud and Vestfold University College

As China’s economy is progressively opened to the West, so too its scholars have started to reveal how the social system, little by little, responds to the authoritarian control of the Chinese Communist Party. What is revealed in these pages by no means amounts to a revolution or even a mild challenge to the CCP. Yet there is a glimpse of the way professionals in schools are able to negotiate aspects of moral education that suits their particular needs and indeed their constituencies. For some schools there is straightforward conformity to CCP policies, but for others there are detours and side streets that provide space for new ideas and indeed directions that suit local needs and respond to local pressures. The case studies reported here are illuminating for what they show us about school level decision making as well as macro conditions in twenty-first century China. The book is an important window on a part of the world that is assuming increasing importance for everyone.

Kerry John Kennedy, Hong Kong Institute of Education