It is well established that China has emerged as a major economic power, resulting from the nationÕs neoliberal modernisation. What is less understood is the socio-cultural and educational impact of this change on public institutions. This article focuses on the education system, which is currently seen as central to delivering the nationÕs modernisation project, particularly through suzhi jiaoyu (education for quality). More specifically, we engage with a pervasive public discourse of a boy

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... sis. We suggest the need critically to explore the local (national) meanings within a contemporary Chinese context of this assumed projected crisis that appears to be established as a western phenomenon. We argue that the discourse of a boy crisis can be read as a strategic move to re-inscribe an earlier discourse, that of the boy preference, that in turn is discursively linked to nation building at a time of globally-inflected socio-economic transformations.