THE MODERNIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE IN CHINA: CONCEPTS, POLICIES, AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES

Abstract

Educational governance modernization has become central to China’s efforts to build a high-quality education system and advance national modernization. This conceptual and policy review examines how governance modernization is defined, translated into policy, and implemented in practice. Drawing on Chinese policy documents, international guidance, and recent research, it argues that modernization is neither a linear shift from government control to market coordination nor simply administrative digitization. Rather, it is a hybrid transformation combining strategic leadership, rule-based administration, central-local coordination, institutional agency, network participation, digital governance, public-service equity, and learning-oriented accountability. Recent policies set ambitious 2035 goals while linking quality, equity, supervision, evaluation reform, demographic change, and digital transformation. Practical reforms—including pilot programs, governance innovation, education supervision, and the Smart Education of China platform—demonstrate both the strengths and limitations of coordinated governance. Key tensions include uniformity versus adaptation, autonomy versus accountability, participation versus power, data use versus ethics, and evaluation versus metric distortion. An eight-domain framework is proposed to integrate public value, authority, coordination, institutional responsibility, collaboration, digital governance, equity, and adaptive evaluation. The review concludes that sustainable modernization depends on clearer roles, stronger local capacity, professional autonomy, responsible evidence use, and institutionalized feedback.