Special needs education for children in China

This entry provides a brief socio-historical account of a circular trajectory of de/re-institutionalization in the schooling of special needs children in China, a trajectory intertwined with the state's modernity project to govern its non-normative populations. While adopting an international framework of inclusive education, such as the Learning in Regular Classrooms initiative, the Chinese state also promotes public special education schools as a ‘necessary evil’ in the twenty-first century. China's multi-format approach highlights inclusive education as a complex field of contradictions and inconsistencies, driven by local structures of inequality and global trends. Globally, the long road towards inclusion has led to different kinds of places. The Chinese case reveals the need to decolonize the framework of mainstreaming as the one-size-fits-all solution, and foster more contextual understanding of inclusion as a multifaceted, unfolding process where structural inequalities within mainstream education continue to produce segregation as well as new inclusive possibilities.