The relationship between the State’s power to education and the right to education is the basis of education jurisprudence. Article 46 of the Constitution of China stipulates that citizens have the right and duty to receive education, behind which lies the legal relationship between the State’s power to education and the right to receive education. This provision is the overarching provision of the education law system, and its background and institutional meaning can help to observe the interaction between power and right, and regulate the exercise of the State’s power to education. When the 1982 Constitution of China was first created, it implemented a labourcentred view of education, which regarded citizens’ access to education as both a right and a duty. Among other things, the obligation to receive education includes compulsory education, preemployment education and education for workers. This provided a normative basis for the expansion of the State’s power to education.1985 saw the evolution of the goal of education into the cultivation of talents, the normative contraction of the obligation to receive education, and the State’s power to education became normalized.On this basis, it is possible to build a basic framework for the balance of power and rights: the State’s power to education interferes with the right to education, and it needs to fulfil the normative requirements of the scope and intensity of the right to education, legal reservations and substantive justification in order to ensure the internal balance of the normative system of education law.

constitution; education law; national power to education; right to education; duty to education