Lifelong education and lifelong learning with Chinese characteristics: a critical policy discourse analysis

Researchers in China have keenly explored how lifelong education and lifelong learning, as imports from “the West,” may become localized in China, although a small chorus has also tried to revitalize Confucianism to bear on the field. This paper adds to this domain of discussion with a critical discourse analysis of Chinese lifelong education/learning policies. It finds that lifelong education and life learning have been positioned pragmatically to support the country’s modernist project of development, which culminates in the proclamation to shift from “made in China,” i.e., a manufacture-based economy, to “created in China,” i.e., a knowledge-based economy. Within this overall picture, the Marxist socialist and collective ideology has been made the hegemony in the promotion of lifelong education/learning practices. Western humanism and Confucian humanism have also had sketchy presence in the documents examined, although they are not necessarily invoked together with their original ideological connotations. The study also shows that given their directive genre, these policies have served to designate multiple actors to turn lifelong education and learning into practice and promote socialist lifelong learners as the ideal learning subjects; both mechanisms are implicated in entrenching existing governmental power structure.