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China’s economic rise has been breathtaking and unprecedented, and this is no less true of its education system. Not only has China provided basic educational opportunities to more people in a relatively short period of time than elsewhere, but it has also helped spawn the largest higher education system in the world. Education in China is expected to reproduce a social order that can support a massive manufacturing economy, while producing innovative thinkers for a knowledge economy. As the work of new Chinese scholars becomes accessible in English to the larger global community, myths will be removed and replaced by more accurate and sophisticated analyses of China’s fascinatingly complex educational transformation. This series, Emerging Perspectives on Education in China, presents the work of a unique breed of young Chinese scholars—those who undertook postgraduate study abroad or in postcolonial Hong Kong, where there is greater access to the international academic literature and more academic freedom than elsewhere in China. The studies in this series demonstrate a determination on the part of young scholars to explore emerging educational issues and grapple with the challenges of conducting research within mainland China. Their research is based on firsthand fieldwork data gathered by adapting research methodologies to diverse settings in different parts of mainland China. It is in this context that the series provides emerging perspectives about the transmission of culture through formal structures of education.