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"Focuses on how childhood was reconstructed in China, and how children were cared for in new ways, from the early Republican period through the first decade of the PRC. During this time, reformers tried to "modernize" childhood, using a scientific rationale to justify increased intervention in family life, and leverage it as a fulcrum for social and political change in the country. The Chinese state eventually usurped the authority of these reformers and increased government involvement in child welfare and family life. While some opposed the state using childhood as a tool for economic modernization and political control, child advocates saw China's national salvation project as consistent with their efforts to safeguard children's "happiness." The book therefore shows that this "sentimentalization" of childhood could serve multiple purposes: academic scholarship, economic modernization, and political diplomacy"--

Abstract
After the White Terror of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party relocated from Shanghai to the border region between Jiangxi and Fujian; one of the major challenges that the new Chinese Soviet Republic faced was transition from urban to rural. While political historians explored the ensuing conflicts between Soviet and Chinese influences, the lens of children's history indicates that children's organisations—and children themselves—freely adopted Soviet influences for their own local needs. By examining the visual and textual representation of children and by children in two major periodicals, this article suggests that children participated in the creation of a new political culture and imagination with important legacies for wartime propaganda.

AbstractThis article charts the Chinese indigenization of better baby contests, from Christian health services offered by the YWCA to positive models of nourishment organized by Chinese philanthropic organizations and local and central governments. American missionaries and milk-powder companies played a large role in sponsoring the contests in China. Influenced by the rise of scientific measurement and 'national rejuvenation' as promoted by the New Culture Movement in 1915, Chinese organizers tended to focus on liveliness, gender equality, and statistics that pointed to the need for public reform. As in the United States of America, scientific criteria sometimes also challenged conventional notions of plump cuteness. These goals sometimes conflicted with the implicit aims of corporate sponsors. Contests thus celebrated new material conditions and public hygiene facilitated by modern industry, but was at the same time circumscribed by commercial advertisers, reticent evangelists, or other sponsors.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese adapted scouting, which had originally been developed to masculinize British youth as future colonial troops. While Chinese families and teachers valued scouting as a form of outdoor recreation, Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang after 1927 connected scouting to preparation for military training. In addition to fostering masculinity among boys, the Chinese Scouting Association also directed Girl Scouts with new models of patriotic girlhood. The Guomindang promoted the distinct femininity of the Girl Scouts and channeled girls' patriotism into nursing. As China entered World War II, Girl Scouts became significant symbols of patriotism in an increasingly militarized children's culture. The Guomindang showcased Yang Huimin, a Girl Scout and heroine in the Battle of Sihang Warehouse, as a spokesperson for the Nationalist cause, but it could not fully control her public image.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese adapted scouting, which had originally been developed to masculinize British youth as future colonial troops. While Chinese families and teachers valued scouting as a form of outdoor recreation, Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang after 1927 connected scouting to preparation for military training. In addition to fostering masculinity among boys, the Chinese Scouting Association also directed Girl Scouts with new models of patriotic girlhood. The Guomindang promoted the distinct femininity of the Girl Scouts and channeled girls' patriotism into nursing. As China entered World War II, Girl Scouts became significant symbols of patriotism in an increasingly militarized children's culture. The Guomindang showcased Yang Huimin, a Girl Scout and heroine in the Battle of Sihang Warehouse, as a spokesperson for the Nationalist cause, but it could not fully control her public image. Keywords: Girl Scouts, scouting, gender roles, China, World War II

The dissertation traces the sentimental value of childhood and the economic impact of preschool education from 1903 to 1953. According to state theorists and social reformers, by abolishing child labor and separating childhood from work, preschool education would facilitate the transition from a household to an industrial economy and would allow women to join the workforce. Long-term structural continuities undergird conflicts over the political indoctrination of children and their relationships to family hierarchies. Institutionally separated from their families, kindergartners could be trained as loyal Qing subjects, or Nationalist citizens, or Communist comrades. Each regime criticized alternative or older versions of early childhood socialization in order to shape future generations.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Conventions -- Introduction The Rise and Growth of a Global "Moral Empire": The YMCA and YWCA during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries -- Part I. The Origins of the YMCA's and YWCA's Social Work in Asia: The Social Gospel and Local Interpretations -- 1 Vectors of Practicality: Social Gospel, the North American YMCA in Asia, and the Global Context -- 2 Proximity, Progress, and the YMCA in Early Twentieth-Century Asia, 1902–1912 -- 3 The Japanese YMCA, Christian Masculinities, and Japan's Colonization of Korea, 1905–1919 -- 4 The YMCA's Message of Public Health and Masculinity, 1910s–1920s: Transnational Impacts of the Physical Education Programs in China, the Philippines, and Japan -- 5 Mediating Modern Motherhood: The Shanghai YWCA's "Women's Work for Women," 1908–1949 -- Part II. The YMCA and Internationalism after World War I: The Attempts to Integrate Eastern Europe into a Global Civil Society -- 6 Returning "Genuine Faith" to Modernity: The Academic YMCA in Interwar Czechoslovakia -- 7 For the "Youth of a Great Nation": The American YMCA and Nation Building in Greater Romania in the Interwar Period -- Part III. The YMCA and American Society: Inculcating White Protestant Middle-Class Values -- 8 The Idiom of Modernity and the Construction of the Native Speaker: YMCA Language Instruction at Home and Abroad -- 9 Building a "Modern" "American" "Indian": The Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, 1926–1995 -- Part IV. The Aftermath of Fascism and World War II: The YMCA's Social Work in Cold War Africa -- 10 Education for Leadership: The YMCA in Late Imperial Ethiopia, 1940s–1970s -- Contributors -- Index