From Burden of Responsibility to Pride of Contribution: A Search for Balance Among Competing Moralities in Chinese Classrooms

ABSTRACT This paper explores ethnographically how Chinese youth navigated competing, but not mutually incompatible, demands between collective responsibility and self‐interest in their everyday lives under the Class Cadre System—a nationwide student leadership and classroom management institution. This research advances the anthropological framework of competing moralities to conceptualize the experiences of Chinese youth and proposes a search for moral balance as a valuable lens for understanding how young people negotiate these demands in both school and society.