From Performance to Practice

Changing the Meaning of Child Participation in China

Abstract

*Focus on Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific | Research Articles

The potential scope of children’s participation in China is enormous, with one-fifth of the world’s population there. Processes of economic and social change in China over the past two decades have opened up new opportunities for children’s participation, but have increased pressures on children’s time. Welfare and educational systems are changing a step behind the pace of economic reform and its consequent increasing inequalities. Traditional ideas of childhood, in particular children’s subservience to adults, have continued despite shifts in the social environment, and mitigate against children’s participation, which has continued to be largely understood as performance or activity. Promotion of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by international non-government organizations in partnership with government in the 1990s drew attention to participation. Since the turn of the century, more possibilities for participation and more projects have been initiated, including children’s research and the founding of an independent organization by children and young people.