Representation of Chinese Citizens in Primary School Social Studies Textbooks under the Leadership of President Xi Jinping

Abstract

This study explores the representation of Chinese citizenship in the nationally unified primary school textbooks Morality and Rule of Law (Grades 1–6) under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. The study, using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and Stuart Hall’s theory of representation, applies Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine the corpus of twelve volumes of textbooks. The analysis shows that citizenship is represented as a spiraling, cumulative configuration of seven overlapping dimensions, rather than a linear progression from behavioral obedience to democratic autonomy: moral personhood, family and community responsibility, public rules, legal consciousness, structured participation, national identity, and ecological or global responsibility. The curriculum does not promote unstructured autonomy; rather it frames civic engagement as “bounded or structured participation” within legitimate institutional and state-sanctioned channels. The textbooks allow scope for negotiation and critical evaluation of inappropriate behavior, although preferred readings are dominant. This study documents the specific civic subject positions made available by the curriculum, underscoring that these textbook representations do not automatically reflect actual student reception or political effects in classroom practice.