Culture, Music Education, and the Chinese Dream in Mainland China

This book focuses on the rapidly changing sociology of music as manifested in Chinese society and Chinese education. It examines how social changes and cultural politics affect how music is currently being used in connection with the Chinese dream. While there is a growing trend toward incorporating the Chinese dream into school education and higher education, there has been no scholarly discussion to date. The combination of cultural politics, transformed authority relations, and officially approved songs can provide us with an understanding of the official content on the Chinese dream that is conveyed in today’s Chinese society, and how these factors have influenced the renewal of values-based education and practices in school music education in China.

Dr. Ho Wai-Chung is a frequent contributor to leading international research journals in the fields of education, music education, and cultural studies, and has been published in such top-ranked journals as Comparative Education, Popular Music & Society, Social History, British Journal of Music Education, International Journal of Music Education, and Music Education Research. Her recent book, Popular Music, Cultural Politics and Music Education in China, addresses the power and potential use of popular music in school music education to produce and reproduce cultural politics. As inspired by the Chinese dream, this book furthers her research on the recent social and political developments in China’s music education and provides a critical account of how the Chinese authorities use music (particularly singing songs) in the construction of values and identities in both the national community and school music education.