Exploring the Meaning of Social Justice in Chinese Context

The globalization process has been greatly affecting the development of many professions as well as the young people who strive to become one recognized member of the professions. Among the many professions, social work, with its long tradition in pursuing social justice is the major concern here. This paper attempts to investigate how social work undergraduates in China understand and interpret the key concept of social justice, the value that they should be devoted to defend, and what factors contribute to their understandings and interpretations. As a qualitative research, in-depth semi-structure interview was adopted to collect opinions from 23 social work students in Guangdong province.

    Result indicates that this group of interviewed students perceives social justice as a distant ideal which is too difficult to achieve. From the students’ narratives, a strong sense of powerlessness was detected and they feel constrained a lot by current social and political reality in Chinese society. They mostly construct the idea of justice within a nation-state framework by using a resource-distribution scheme.

    Their conception of social justice is largely a mixed product of Western-oriented social work education and their growing-up experience in transitional Chinese society. In addition, it is worth exploring the distinctive and long-lasting effect of their received political education (mainly derived from Marxists’ theories) in high school, which offers them vocabulary, standpoint, and theoretical assumptions to develop their interpretations of justice. Based on above empirical findings, this research suggests some future directions for promoting a more inclusive and globalized understanding of social justice among the Chinese youth.