Starting point and research questions

The educational transfer is one of the most important areas of research in Comparative and International Education. Reference Societies, as one of the most essential concepts in the discussion on educational transfer, refer usually to “the model nation from which to borrow element” (e.g. Bendix, 1978; Schriewer, 1992). Following this definition, the existing research has focused almost exclusively on the positive type of reference societies, which work as desirable models indicating an accepting attitude toward the referring context, for example, Finnish schools in German media perception of PISA (Takayama et al., 2013).

Since the “PISA-Shock” after PISA 2000 (Waldow, 2009), the German media has been continually conducting reflections on their own school reforms, often along with searching for external examples for local contexts. In this process, Shanghai, as well as B-S-J-Z (Mainland China), has been one of the most hotly debated objects. An interesting phenomenon is that in spite of the same top – sometimes even better – performance as Finland in PISA, Mainland China was represented mostly as a negative reference society for German school reforms (Waldow et al., 2014). In opposition to the positive ones, negative reference societies play a purported role as “anti-model”, from which any kind of borrowing is rejected.

To this phenomenon, there are already several explanations provided by existing studies through the lens of cognitive dissonance theory (Cooper, 2011) as well as the country-of-origin effects based on national stereotypes (Waldow, 2017). However, this research work will shift the perspective of analysis to post-colonial theory, placing focus on the question: To what extent does this negative projection of China in German Media discourse relate to the legacy of the colonialized constitution of the relationship between Europa and Asia?

Theoretical framework

Stemming from the study of Orientalism (Said, 1978), the post-colonial theory encompasses diverse perspectives to understand the image constitution of reference societies in local contexts.

In the long historical process of worldwide expansion by Europeans, a dominant discourse of dichotomy came into space, which focused on the extent of modernity (Hall, 2018). Accordingly, the “Orient” was constructed as an exact counter-image of Europe, namely as “the other” of the West. The resulting binary system of representation is embedded in a stereotypical regime in which the “Orient” was designed as feminine, irrational, and primitive in contrast to the masculine, rational, and progressive West (Duara, 1996; Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2020).

However, both in history and in the actual circumstances, the prevailing representation of the “Orient” in the Western discourse is imaginary (Said, 1978; Hall, 2018). First of all, the “Orient” representing the geographical east of Europe was often reduced to a homogenous unity, regardless of the distinct differences among oriental cultures (Wang, 2011). Secondly, the understanding of the appearances in contemporary post-colonial regions is still framed by their primitive roots, often in the form of religion, for example, Islamism in Near East and Confucianism in East Asia. Last but not the least, the Western representations of the East were by no means straightforward, but often characterized by a deep “ambivalence” (Bhabha, 2014): The "Orient" has experienced contempt and inferiority on one hand, and attraction and anxiety on the other. 

Numerous studies show that the mass media play an essential role in the political agenda-setting by selecting which news they report and how they present the topics (McCombs et al., 2014). This research focuses on two quality newspapers in Germany, which represent different political orientations: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (center-right) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (center-left). The timeframe of data collection is between 2000 and 2020. The analysis of data is conducted with the help of qualitative methods, namely a mixture of inductive content analysis (Mayring, 2015) and deductive frame analysis (Entman, 1993; Matthes, 2014). However, a fundamental principle running through the process of data analysis is that the research object is placed in the foreground instead of the chosen procedures (Mayring, 2015).

In the representation of the results of PISA, the success of Shanghai was often wordily generalized as of China, especially concerning the stereotyped characteristics of “Chinese Education”, likewise “exam-oriented”, “rote learning”, “rigorousness” and so on. Despite the good results in PISA, negative aspects of Chinese education are mainly reported. Although China did not belong to typical colonialized countries, it was traditionally perceived as an inferior quasi-colony in the discourse of educational transfer in German newspapers. China is not supposed to be projected as an educational system, to which positive references for the so-called “modernized” schools in the German context could be made. In the projection onto the Chinese school system, the success of Chinese students in PISA was mainly ascribed to the Confucian impact on the teaching and learning style, for example, the tradition of “respecting teachers and valuing education”. The recent reform measures conducted in Shanghai´s schools were almost completely ignored, which could make more contribution to the high performance of the students (e.g. school-based teaching research system). And they are hardly about Confucianism. This phenomenon could be traced back to the trait of Orientalism, that the primitive religious roots are likely explored because this corresponds to the long-existing stereotypes of Chinese culture. The projection onto Chinese education in the wave of PISA shows an “ambivalent” feeling of German society. On the one hand, the high performance of Shanghai´s students was reduced to the results of extra-long learning time and exam-oriented learning style, suggesting that Chinese schools are less progressive in contrast to Western education, and so have nothing to be eventually borrowed by German schools. On the other hand, a feeling of anxiety about their future is perceptible in German discourse on the high competitiveness of Chinese students as well as the economic power.

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