Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds - migrant, urban or rural - against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China's modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China's exploration of new paradigms of governance. © Copyright The China Quarterly 2011.

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education China curriculum rural society Fujian Xiamen Modernization urban society modernity