Mobilising China's One-Child Generation

Explores the militarisation of education and youth in contemporary China

• Uses China Studies, Critical Military Studies, and the Anthropology of Youth and Education to highlight the interaction between macro-level social and political trends and individual perceptions and experiences
• Documents a growing emphasis on military values and techniques in Chinese youth culture and education, highlighting the intersection between this trend and the construction of the national collectivity, masculinities and femininities in contemporary China
• Demonstrates the importance of positioning youth subjectivities in the centre of Critical Military Studies rather than engaging youth only as objects and/or victims of militarisation processes
• Identifies key breaks and continuities in the militarisation of Chinese education since the PRC's establishment in 1949
• Explores key differences and similarities between PRC militarisation processes and the militarisation of youth and education worldwide

Drawing on a wide variety of Chinese-language publications and in-depth interviews with high-school students, Mobilising China's One-Child Generation provides systematic evidence of the spread of martial logic and techniques into Chinese schools. The book explores how China has implemented Patriotic Education and National Defence Education programmes to foster love for the nation and the Party-state, mobilise the population to fight modern wars in the information age, and encourage youth to join the army. It studies how these programmes present the tropes of war and the military to youth, and how they are related to shifting constructions of gender and the national collectivity. It also documents students' varied perceptions–and notably contestations–of this militarised ethos, complicating our understanding of popular nationalism and militarisation processes in this authoritarian global power.