Embedded cultural programs and the inertia of China's education reform: Confucian semantics and the imperial examination legacy
Yisu LiPurpose
This article examines how China's 2021 Double Reduction reform is translated in practice and uses the Chinese case to develop a broader systems-theoretical account of reform translation under evaluative pressure.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Luhmann's systems theory and autopoietic ecology, this article develops an interpretive mechanism model that analyses reform translation through the distinction between program-compatible coding, weak re-entry and strict re-entry, with attention to organisational decision premises and the structural coupling of education, family and the state.
Findings
Under high-stakes evaluation, organisations draw on Confucian and keju-linked semantics to justify selection and standardised fairness, so reform is often absorbed through criteria-preserving responses rather than durable revision of evaluative criteria. Re-entry therefore remains constrained and often weak, allowing new exam-prep variants to reproduce some of the burdens reform seeks to reduce.
Originality/value
Rather than treating China only as an empirical object, this article develops the Chinese case as a theoretically productive site for showing how reforms are translated, absorbed and sometimes neutralised within multifunctional organisations. It also shows how cultural semantics become organisationally consequential when mobilised within existing programmatic and evaluative arrangements.