In contemporary China, there are a huge variety of ideals, activities, people, practices, networks and buildings that could be depicted as either religious or quasi-religious. These include Christian churches, Islamic mosques, Buddhist, Daoist and local temples, ancestral shrines, fortune tellers, geomancers, qigong practitioners (those who manipulate qi, the vital energy of life), Confucian ritualists, teachers of Confucian, Daoist or Buddhist philosophy, and even the purveyors of state ideologies and rituals, who often draw on broadly religious sensibilities. To grasp this huge array of discourses, activities, people and things, we must begin by examining why some are classified as “religious” while others are not, and how Chinese historical experience has affected this classificatory logic.

Defining and regulating religious activity in China

In western countries, over the latter half of the second millennium, the category of religion took shape through the gradual emergence of secular modes of governing and scientific reasoning in societies that were formerly ruled in the name of Christianity. Because Christianity emphasized inner belief, and because the power of religious leaders was diminished by the separation of the church from both state rule and the scientific depiction of nature, the category of religion came to refer to relatively powerless institutions of belief, clearly separate from both government and science. Freedom of religion became a freedom of “belief” that was not to impinge on either state rule or scientific reason. Individuals or groups who wished to impose their religion on the state, or who ignored scientific findings because of their religious beliefs, were dismissed respectively as zealots or cults.

Outside the family, some of the most significant institutions in societies are those that categorize people and establish principles of inclusion and exclusion and stratification between the categories. Among the most fundamental of such institutions in the modern world is citizenship, which draws sharp distinctions between citizens who enjoy rights and privileges by virtue of being legally recognized as permanent residents of a nation, and non-citizens who do not enjoy such rights because they are legally defined as foreigners or temporary residents.

In 1950, the sociologist TH Marshall wrote an influential paper about the historical evolution of citizenship in Britain. In this, he argued that institutions of citizenship established, and partially fulfilled, a social expectation for the amelioration of the class inequalities between citizens that capitalism had created. Marshall wrote that this did not happen all at once, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, civil rights

In the 20th century, however, state provision of social rights in the form of public education and a national welfare system acquired a new meaning. No longer merely “an attempt to abate the obvious nuisance of destitution in the lowest ranks of society”, this provision began to reshape the whole structure of social inequalities and, Marshall predicted, “might even end by converting a skyscraper into a bungalow”.

The relationship between ethnic and regional identities in China is complex. Some regions of the country, even entire provinces, are politically labeled as “minority regions”, such as the “Xinjiang [provincial-level] Uyghur Autonomous Region”, or the “Diqing Autonomous Tibetan Prefecture” in Yunnan province. More important than this simple geographical overlap is a broader political question: why are some differences in language, religion, food and dress considered “regional” in China, while others are considered to be “ethnic”? The answers to this question are historical and political rather than intrinsic to particular groups of people.

This chapter focuses on the issue of ethnic difference in China. It traces the relationship of ethnic and regional categories, the historical origins of various ethnic categories, themanner in which these differences map onto present-day identities, and the way that they structure current patterns of ethnic inequality and conflict.

Regional difference and identity in China

As noted in the introduction, China has historically been constituted by wide regional differences. Different parts of the country grow different grains and consequently eat different staple foods. Regional “dialects” are as different as the languages of the countries of Europe. Strong patrilines and lineage halls are more likely to found in southern than northern China. The main styles of (non-staple) cooking in China – Sichuan food, Cantonese food, Hunanese food, Shandong food and so on – are named after provinces. Forms of traditional opera are named after the places (usually provinces) from which they originated, as are varieties of music associated with that opera. Many forms of family rituals – weddings, funerals and so on – vary depending on the place, and many villages, towns and cities have temples devoted to gods that are said to reside in that particular place and at which only local people worship.

Competition in China's education system is intense. The causes and consequences of this competition are complex and involve social stratification, gender and ethnic relations, economic inequality, political legitimacy, international migration and ideologies of development. In this chapter, we introduce the education system in China and assess the factors that contribute to its intensity and the consequences of intense educational competition for Chinese society. We also discuss state and popular discourses that promise the salvation of the Chinese nation through the cultivation of citizens. These discourses feed on, and contribute to, popular desires for educational success.

Educational structures in China

In China, it is compulsory to complete nine years of education (usually six years of primary school and three years of junior secondary school). Across most of the country, these nine years of education are now available for free to all citizens. This level of educational provision is an accomplishment that was gradually achieved over the course of most of the 20th century. It has only recently been attained in many rural areas. Because local governments have provided a good percentage of the funds for education, impoverished localities have been the last to be able to provide nine years of education for everybody. Recent efforts to increase the level of central and provincial funding for education in impoverished areas have been important to this success, as has the central state's requirement, as of 2006, that rural primary and junior secondary schools remove all tuition fees.

Work is the subject of a great deal of research in China. Yet it is fair to say that most of this research is quite narrowly focused and overlooks many forms of work. Three terms in Chinese are commonly used to refer to work: laodong, dagong and gongzuo. First, there is labor, work or toil (laodong), which refers to the action of transforming nature, creating products or performing services. The term can therefore be used to describe many things, from activities that involve coercion to the growing of food for personal consumption, cooking, cleaning and caring for others in a home, to volunteering, self-employment or paid employment. Second, temporary or seasonal employment (dagong) may involve physical effort. Third, if a person has a “proper job” (gongzuo) they are typically employees (zhigong, literally “staff and workers”) within enterprises, professions or the civil service. The bulk of research into work in China has focused on gongzuo and dagong in enterprises. Less attention has been paid to the work done in China's huge civil service, the armed forces and the media, and nor has much research been conducted on the many activities referred to as laodong, including bonded and child labor, sex work, farmwork, volunteer community service and unpaid domestic work. Owing to the scarcity of evidence, this chapter also says little about these latter forms of work.

How do young adults – people in their teens, twenties and thirties – build a sense of self and identity for themselves? And what impact does modernization have on young peoples' sense of identity, self-expression, values, and desires? These questions dominate the literature on youth in contemporary China, and form the framework for this chapter.

In the social sciences, as we noted in the introduction, modernization and modernity are commonly seen to entail urbanization, industrialization, the spread of mass education, commercialization, and advances in technology that enable the rapid flow of goods, values and people over increasing distances. Together, these are seen to lead to a breaking down of “traditional” social institutions, which previously socialized young people; clearly staked out how they were to move from childhood to adulthood; gave them stable identities; and fixed them in a rigid, hierarchical social order. As Marshall Berman, citing Marx and Engels, put it, “all that is solid melts into air”. With rapid change and cultural contact come uncertainties about our place in the world, and the future becomes less predictable. Possible identity schemes multiply, the formation of identities is less rigidly determined by existing local institutions such as the family and religious institutions and becomes more an individual project, and both the anxieties and freedoms associated with shaping an identity increase. Indeed, as the sociologist Anthony Giddens has seen it, self-identity becomes a question and a problem for the first time under modernity, and with “late modernity”, a person's life becomes more and more an individualized, reflexive project; a matter of actively choosing an identity, selecting a lifestyle, and identifying and planning life goals and how to actualize them.