Scottish Centre for China Research

When: Wednesday 4 February 2026 at 4–5.30pm 

Where: 208 McIntyre Building, University of Glasgow and online with registration here. 

 

Abstract: 

How do citizens learn to speak, act, and remain silent as citizens in contemporary China? This talk advances a linguistic approach to citizenship by examining how Confucianism operates as a resource for citizen-making. Drawing on state discourse and long-term ethnographic research on grassroots Confucian education, it argues that civic formation unfolds through two structurally asymmetric yet interconnected mechanisms: an authorised language of citizenship at the state level, and a more indirect language for citizenship articulated from below. While the former re-codes citizenship in moral–civilisational terms, the latter enables practices of “civicness without naming” under conditions of constrained speakability. By foregrounding language as a site of power, mediation, and agency, the talk rethinks how citizenship is produced across uneven state–society relations.

Short Bio: 

Canglong Wang is a sociologist and China studies specialist based at the University of Brighton. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on Confucianism, citizenship, and individualisation in contemporary China, with particular attention to the revival of Confucian education. He is the author of Cultivating the Confucian Individual (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and The Rise of Confucian Citizens in China (Routledge, 2024), and the co-editor of Reconsidering Chinese Citizenship: Cultural Roots and Cultural Reach (Routledge, 2025). He is currently editing several books and journal special issues, and is preparing a third monograph on a new generation of Confucian actors in contemporary China. He can be contacted at c.wang@brighton.ac.uk or canglongwang6@gmail.com.