To date, the impacts of arts and culture on society - whether positive or negative - have been intensively discussed and reflected in the economic, political and educational fields (e.g. through deliberations for cultural policy on funding culture projects, political and educational agenda on promoting culture and arts education) (Belfiore, 2008; Gilmore & Abigail, 2014; Winner et al., 2013). Among these initiatives, educational ones ofttimes emphasise the positive impacts of -arts and culture on schooling, which, to some extent, reflect the impact the government hopes to have on arts education (Commission et al., 2012; Sabol, 2013). Educational policy, arguably, is one of the important initiatives to respond to governmental demands (Henry et al., 1997) for arts education. For instance, the New European Culture Agenda (2016) envision that arts education can develop critical appreciation, persevere cultural diversity, foster creativity, et cetera, which shows the EU’s eagerness to promote cohesion through the arts and cultural education.

Coincidentally, the most recent educational reform in China and the ensuing improvement in policy demonstrate the growing importance of arts education but also the expectations of the government. The policy background of this rejuvenation can be traced back to 2014, whereafter a series of arts education policies (2014，2015，2020) were issued by China’s central authority. In those policies, the arts education is assumed as an essential path to achieve the fundamental goal of China’s general education, which comprises Lide Shuren [Enhance morality, Foster talents].  In addition to the policy, the Chinese government also provide guidelines for enhancing arts educational practices in the policy documents (2020). Together the policies and interpretative documents manifest that arts education has reached an unprecedented height and ushered in great development opportunities in China (Xu, 2018). In this regard, an in-depth examination of the policy is imperative for a better understanding of the status of arts education in China and the governmental expectations represented therein.

The focus of the previous research, in China, is more on the diachronic evolution (Li, 2019; Sun & Xu, 2022), descriptive interpretation (Yan, 2015) and implementation (Zhao, 2019) of the arts education policy. Meanwhile, western scholars have reconsidered arts education in broader educational shifts (Sabol, 2013) and adopted diverse approaches (e.g. the cultural policy analysis framework (Shaw, 2018), critical policy analysis (Kos, 2017)) to question the advocacy and examine the discursive practice present in the arts education policy texts (Logsdon, 2013). However, a critical appraisal of the current policies is yet to be conducted in China.

In this paper, the overarching goal has been to understand the principles and the functions of China’s arts education constructed in the top policies and explore the governmental demands and discursive practice. The authors, therefore, applied a critical discourse-analytical reading of the three-arts education policy(2014,2015,2020).These three top policies are deemed the most authoritative policy in the current decade, providing us with the representative and widely used government discourse on arts education. Unpacking the policy discourse and the hidden cultural and power logic, we aim to make an empirical contribution to the research on arts education policy in China.

In order to unpack the expected functions encompassed by arts education policy in China’s educational setting, this paper presents a critical analysis of top-policy texts that contain the major advocacy of arts education in China. Policies are not only words written in formal documents, but vivid political representations, compromises and practices. The policies are thus dynamic and interactive(Henry et al., 1997). CDA is known as a toolkit for analysing how semiotic choices are being made and how the choices are integrated with practice to achieve certain communicative aims (Machin & Mayr, 2012). It helps to reveal the underneath ideology, power, a body of knowledge in policy texts. In fact, CDA is now widely accepted in educational research, especially in educational policy analysis(Rogers et al., 2016). However, it is acknowledged that CDA is not a concrete method but a set of diverse methods aimed at merging textual and social analysis, critical social theory and linguistic analysis. It is premised upon the supposition that discourse is socially constitutive as it is socially conditioned (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000). ‘[CDA] studies [are concerned with] real, and often extended, instances of social interaction which take (partially) linguistic form. The critical approach is distinctive in its view of (a) the relationship between language and society, and (b) the relationship between analysis and the practices analysed’(Wodak, 1997). Thus, in this paper, this author applies CDA to analyse the top policies to find out how it creates meaning and persuades the audience to know China’s arts education advocacy in a way. (Hansen & Machin, 2018) There are different well-formed traditions of CDA, such as sociocognitive, discourse-historical, critical metaphor, Foucauldian, ethnographic and so on(Rogers et al., 2016). While in this article, one of the typical representatives of CDA- Fairclough’s dialectical-relational method- which combined different CDA research methods to form the 'three-dimensional model' is undertaken. Firstly, Fairclough defined language as a kind of social practice which is an eternal intervention force of the order of society. It reflects reality from diverse perspectives, manipulates and influences social processes through recurring in ideology; in the social and cultural contexts, language and values, religious beliefs and power relations are mutually influential; the application of language can prompt the change of discourse and social reform (Fairclough, 2001). Based on this, the well-known three-dimensional analysis framework is framed as text, discourse practice, and social practice.

Drawing on the previous policy document and research, we will first sketch an outline of the evolution of arts education policy in China. In this part, the development of arts education policy is concluded as a five-stage process, which is twisted and tortuous. The background and context of the selected three policies will be highlight. This will be followed by contextualising the socio-economic and socio-politics grounding primarily during the period when the selected policies were issued (i.e. the 2010s). As Henry et al. (1997) mentioned, consideration of economic, social, political and cultural contexts helps shape the policy and illuminate the question of ‘why’ and ‘why’ the policy is built. In considering the context of arts education policy development during the last decade, one noteworthy feature was China's socio-economic and political shifts. Thereafter, the findings will be presented with a particular consideration for the policy discourse and the related discursive practice. 1) For the dimension of the text, a linguistic analysis would be adopted to generate the vocabulary, sentence construction, structure, and choices made by the policy. In this essay, the specific nouns, and adjectives chosen by the policy will be analysed. 2) For the dimension of discursive practice, the production, distribution and the public's and researchers’ reception of the policy text, and the context, the meant audience of the text will be analysed, and the focus will be on intertextuality those three policy texts. 3) For the dimension of social practice: the broader social context (both in and out- of China) of those policies will be examined to identify the politics, economy and ideology which is dominant in/through the text. To close the paper, we offer reflections and discussions on theoretical and practical considerations of arts education policy.

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