WEEKLY SUMMARY SPECIAL REPORT THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION'S IMPACT ON CHINESE EDUCATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A007300050002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 2, 2006
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 19, 1969
• Content Type: SUMMARY

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DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
WEEKLY SUMMARY
special Report
The Cultural Revolutions Impact on Chinese Education
Secret
N2 43
19 September 1969
No. 0388/69A
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THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION'S IMPACT ON CHINESE EDUCATION
Many of the seemingly strange and excessive programs instituted by Mao Tse-tung
over the years have been the overt signs of his consuming passion with creating a "New
China" in his own image and likeness. Essential to his dream is a newly educated youth,
formed according to his self-designed ideological mole. This new youth must be not
only Communist, but Maoist. Side by side with this obsession is that of making China a
major world power, and thus demonstrating the superiority of the thought of Mao over
that of both the "imperialists" and the Soviet "revisionists."
These passions of Mao's led him to loose the winds of the Cultural Revolution, his
most intensive and comprehensive effort to date to remold the Chinese people. A
particularly vital part of the Cultural Revolution in Mao's eyes was the role of the
youth. In large part, the Cultural Revolution was an education process of the highest
order in the Maoist creative plan. It was significant that the Red Guards, drawn from the
student body, were first sent into action against China's educational system.
The short-term effects were immediate and catastrophic as far as the former
educational system was concerned. In typical revolutionary fashion, Mao's Red Guards
had virtually destroyed the pattern of formal education by 1966. Over the last three
years, Mao has been trying to put together a new school system based on a close link
between work and study. Major curriculum categories for lower and middle schools are
Mao's thought, fundamentals for industry and agriculture, revolutionary literature and
art, military training, and physical education. Particularly in the lower schools, localities
are being given closer control over education and relating it more directly to life in the
communes.
Mao's educational formula may help provide the manual and skilled laborers
needed by China's economy but, along with the three-year hiatus in university educa-
tion, may seriously undermine China's ability to produce the modern technology
necessary for industrialization. Nevertheless, Mao will probably insist on emphasizing
revolutionary theory in all education.
BACKGROUND
In 1949 when the Chinese Communists took
control of the mainland, Mao Tse-tung was sud-
denly faced with the monumental problem of
managing the world's largest population, nearly
80 percent of which was illiterate. He needed
bridges repaired and new ones built, irrigation
systems restored, dams constructed, factories
rebuilt, and whole new industries. He needed
engineers, surveyors, physicists, doctors, and elec-
tricians-in short, all the technical and profes-
sional people without which a modern nation
cannot exist, and such people were in short sup-
ply. Another major problem was that the few
technically trained people available to Mao were,
by and large, politically unreliable. They had been
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educated in foreign countries or in China by for-
eigners, they were almost entirely from the
bourgeois or upper classes, and many had even
supported Chiang Kai-shek.
Adding further to Mao's problem was the
fact that China's entire educational system was in
the hands of politically unreliable people. Teach-
ers and intellectuals were repeatedly called upon
to deny their bourgeois past and pledge public
loyalty to Mao and the party. From the first days
of the Communist take-over the extent to which
it was necessary to stress the "red" or political
side of study along with the "expert" or profes-
sional side was a continuing source of friction
between Mao and the school authorities.
The fragile quality of political loyalty was
revealed in the "hundred flowers" period in 1957
when intellectuals, both old and young spoke out
at Mao's invitation with unexpected sharpness
against the lack of freedom in the new China.
That experiment served to solidify Mao's view
that "intellectuals" were an untrustworthy lot.
Mao's educational and technical planning
was also heavily dependent upon the Soviet
Union. Chinese students went to the Soviet Union
for training; Chinese schools were modeled after
Soviet ones; Russian textbooks were translated in
great numbers, and learning Russian was a must
for higher education. Soviet technicians tutored
Chinese apprentices on how to build, run, and
maintain the Soviet equipment installed at all
major industrial sites. Thus, in addition to Mao's
other problems with China's educational system,
there was a potentially serious threat to political
loyalty flowing from the emergence of young
technicians schooled in Soviet "revisionism" at
management levels in the new China.
During the "great leap forward" in 1958 and
1959, Mao introduced a number of radical re-
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forms designed to mesh the schools more closely
with production needs and to break down what
he viewed as the intellectual arrogance of the
school system he had inherited. His changes called
for the massive development of primitive rural
schools to be financed by people's communes,
instead of by the national government; a system
divided equally between work and study; a pre-
college curriculum shortened to ten years; and for
college teachers and students to be remolded
through productive labor on farms and in factor-
ies. Generally Mao's efforts to reduce the arro-
gance of the intellectuals were probably more
successful in lowering their morale and talents
than they were in appreciably raising the educa-
tional standards of the rural masses.
Analysis of propaganda relating to educa-
tional reforms during the Cultural Revolution sug-
gests that Mao's innovative approach to education
met with considerable opposition from those
within the party and the bureaucracy who fa-
vored a more selective approach to education. Liu
Shao-chi is now charged with being the prime
mover behind the opposition to Mao's program.
Taking advantage of the economic difficulties
which grew out of the leap forward excesses, Liu
and his bureaucrats closed down many of the
jerry-built schools founded in 1958. Thus, some
22,600 middle schools that had been opened to
absorb 2.3 million students were pared back so
that only 260,000 students remained by 1962. In
the same period, attendance at primary schools
dropped from 80 to 56 percent. Claiming to cor-
rect leap forward "deviations," Liu's group drew
up a comprehensive plan of their own to restore
educational levels to the pre-1958 period. Stiff
entrance requirements and difficult exams were
reinstituted in an effort to raise the caliber of the
students; in the process, of course, many pf the
workers and the peasants, who in Mao's view were
the repositories of revolutionary virtue, were
excluded.
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In essence, Mao's opponents placed primary
emphasis on the training of a technically qualified
elite so desperately needed to run the nation.
Mao, on the other hand, while acknowledging the
need for better trained youth, did not want the
educational process to hinder the inculcation of
revolutionary spirit. This difference in emphasis
was clearly illustrated in the Mao and Liu views
on students' spending part of their time in school
and part working. The opposition, so the Maoists
have charged, tended to use the general run of
students as crude labor units, with little or no
effort to integrate their school training with spe-
cific work tasks, as Mao insisted. The better stu-
dents were trained for the day when they would
take command over the masses. Consequently,
graduates were imbued with the notion that they
should go straight to government ministries, with
no hardship posts, no tempering on the farms.
Mao, of course, wanted the students to identify
with the masses. In his view, the work assign-
ments of the students were most valuable from
the standpoint of imbuing them with the true
revolutionary spirit of the people. Mao believes
strongly that since the students will one day be
running China, they must be steeped in the osten-
sible revolutionary elan of the masses.
Mao apparently moved in 1964 to put
China's educational system back on the track. To
that end he issued a number of important educa-
tion directives in February and March of that
year. Mao's defenders have claimed that his direc-
tives were nullified as a result of manipulation by
Liu Shao-chi's bureaucracy in the Ministry of
Education and in the organizational chain of com-
mand down to the local level. In the fall of 1964,
Mao reportedly told foreign visitors that he
wanted changes in education but that his minis-
ters were blocking his way.
There is some evidence to suggest that the
controversy in 1964 and 1965, on the eve of the
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Cultural Revolution, focused primarily on the
pace at which Mao's reforms were to take place,
with Mao asking for quick delivery and his minis-
ters buying delay with long-term experimenta-
tion. Premier Chou En-lai suggested as much at
the December 1964 session of the National
People's Congress when he announced that "in
accord with Chairman Liu's instructions" educa-
tional reforms were to come over a "number of
years." He noted that full-time schools and
"experimental" part work and part study (voca-
tional) schools would "gradually" produce new
socialist: men. Clearly Liu believed radical educa-
tional reforms were something for the future.
As much as one year later, in December
1965, Peking newspapers reported an education
conference "under the direct guidance of the
party central committee and Chairman Liu Shao-
chi," where it had been decided that half work,
half study schools for the cities would be experi-
mental for five years and would be expanded only
after ten years.
The forces of gradualism seemed firmly
entrenched, a fact that possibly prompted Mao to
feel that his new socialist man-throttled by red
tape-would not appear in his lifetime. The fol-
lowing spring, on 7 May, Mao issued his famous
directive, which sounded the clarion for rapid
educational reform and the death knell for Liu
and the gradualists.
... the student's... main task is to study... they
should not only learn book knowledge, they
should also learn industrial production, agri-
cultural production, and military affairs.... The
length of schooling should be shortened, educe-
tion should be revolutionized, and the domi-
nation of our schools and colleges by bourgeois
intellectuals should not be tolerated any longer.
Mad Tse-tung, 7May 1966
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THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
AND THE SCHOOLS
Mao's directive of 7 May 1966 was followed
up in June with a number of pronouncements
aimed at the "thorough transformation" of the
educational structure. Schools were suspended to
free the students, who served as the core of the
Cultural Revolution Mao was unleashing; universi-
ties, middle, and even primary schools were
closed by the Red Guards. Almost from the out-
set of the Cultural Revolution the seats of higher
learning served as battlegrounds for the long,
drawn-out wars in the provinces between factions
of the Red Guards. Campuses served as staging
areas for assaults on local authorities both in the
schools and the government. The universities
reverberated with the clamor of power seizure
and counterseizure, mass rallies and counterral-
lies.
In one university after another leading offi-
cials and faculty members were dragged out,
denounced, and humiliated for having resisted
Mao's directives on higher education. Local resist-
ance to Red Guard activities left a trail of vio-
lence, bloodshed, and property damage. Mao's
initial aim of destroying the old order was suc-
cessfully carried out in the earliest stage of the
Cultural Revolution.
The focus of Red Guard attacks clearly re-
flected Mao's antipathy toward the former curric-
ulum for higher education. Criticism of university
medical training, for example, charged that stu-
dents were educated beyond the diseases com-
monly incurred by the masses and that books,
drugs, and instruments the students were taught
to use were unavailable in the great majority of
Chinese hospitals. The Maoist prescription for
that malady was a call for the rapid training of
rural medics-"barefoot doctors"- in the rudi-
ments of public health, and to dispatch urban
doctors, as well as whole hospitals and even
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schools to the rural areas. Such measures have
served to bring at least rudimentary medical; help
to millions of Chinese. The low level of compe-
tence of many of these barefoot doctors, how-
ever, tends to diminish the confidence of the
peasants in the regime's medical program. Over
the long term, suspension of advanced training for
China's doctors would severely limit the quality
of medical competence at all levels and restrict
the availability of highly trained doctors to serve
as teachers for future generations of medical stu-
dents. Mao undoubtedly is well aware of this
danger but he apparently believes that the politi-
cal benefits of his re-education program far out-
weigh any long-term problems that may accrue.
By March 1967 chaos in the educational
system had reached the point at which the
People's Liberation Army (PLA) was directed to
move into the schools of Communist China to
restore order and to reopen them. It is not :clear
whether this step was the result of Mao's belief
that the Red Guards had succeeded in destroying
the old system and that it was time to implement
his own plans or whether he simply had to bow to
his opponents' demands for an end to disorders
on the campus. Middle and primary schools:were
reopened, but for the most part the universities
remained closed. Apparently, difficulties were
encountered in restructuring the curriculum, re-
vising texts, and even assembling faculties and a
student body because of the widespread purge of
teachers and the practice of dispatching teachers
and students alike to the countryside
Many problems seem to be still plaguing the re-
gime, however, and it is possible that the leader-
ship in Peking has been unable to reach agreement
on just how the universities are to be run.
In March 1969, the People's Daily opened a
reader discussion column on "how socialist
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The army should give political and military train-
ing in the universities, middle schools, and the
higher classes of primary schools, stage by stage
and group by group. It should help in reopening
school classes, strengthening organization, setting
up the leading bodies...
Mao Tse-tung, March 1967
universities should be run." The point of depar-
ture was Mao's instruction of 22 July 1968 on the
Shanghai Machine Tools Plant, in which he stated
that university schooling had to be shortened and
that students should be drawn from among the
workers and returned to the job "after a few
years' study." Articles from a number of students
subsequently appeared in the paper enumerating
the advantages of linking colleges with factories
and farms and of reducing their curriculum and
school terms. The newspaper discussion high-
lighted the Maoist concept of integrating theory
with practical application. A typical example il-
lustrating Mao's views is the story of the biology
professor who could categorize flies for half a day
but did not know how to kill one.
MAO'S PROGRAM AT THE MIDDLE
AND PRIMARY LEVEL
In rural areas a propaganda drive for radical
reform was touched off last summer, keyed to
Mao's directive that rural schools should be man-
aged by poor and lower middle-level peasants.
Follow-up articles charged that state-managed
schools had become a special preserve for the
well-to-do and the talented, and they had ruth-
lessly excluded the children of the poor, while
divorcing themselves from politics and produc-
tion. Rural education has long been a trouble-
some stumbling block for Peking, in part because
of its sheer magnitude, in part because of the
intensive demands for labor in production, but
most of all, perhaps, because the regime has been
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unwilling to make the necessary capital invest-
ment.
At the heart of educational reforms intro-
duced during the leap forward in 1958 was the
Maoist theme that schools operated at the collec-
tive or rural commune level should be financed by
the peasants themselves as a way of better serving
local needs, but more importantly, to reduce the
burden of state investment. In the period after
the great leap forward, it became apparent that
rural areas could not generally sustain the boot-
strap operation envisioned by Mao, and thousands
of such schools collapsed. In the fall of 1968, the
Maoists once again insisted that the peasants
could raise funds for their own schools and ease
the burden of state investment. In the early stages
of last fall's campaign, the press featured pace-
setter units that set up schools without "one cent
of state funds," themselves absorbing the cost of
tuition, fees, books, heat, and buildings. Typi-
cally, desks and benches were improvised from
stones and boxes, the sheep pen was a classroom
in summer, the caves in winter and there were
burnt sticks for chalk. The cost of supporting a
teacher was to be defrayed by the teacher's part
time labor.
...In the countryside, the schools should be
managed by the poor and lower middle peas
ants-the most reliable ally of the wonting class.
Mao:Tse tang, August 1968
Mao's thesis did not go unchallenged, how-
ever, and by the end of 1968 some reservations
were raised by rural brigades. These people felt
that communes could not everywhere absorb the
thousands of yuan previously invested by the
state, and that unless the state supplemented the
cost of supporting the teachers, funding their
local schools would definitely reduce peasant
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income. An accommodation of costs was reached
between the Mao thesis of complete local support
of the schools and the former practice of state
support. The compromise was acknowledged
when Kirin Province's model for rural school re-
form was published in May 1969, with the pro-
viso that the state was to supplement the income
of teachers assigned to rural schools. Organisa-
tionally, it is now argued that commune-managed
schools will break down the centralized and per-
pendicular hold formerly exercised over rural edu-
cation by state bureaus and offices. It is claimed
that smaller schools, closer to work and living
areas, will make education accessible to greater
numbers of peasants.
Discipline and attendance, under this for-
mula, are to be ensured by forming classes into
squads, platoons, and companies in the manner of
the PLA. And the primacy of politics, Mao's
thought, and the principle of education serving
production will be guaranteed because the class
character of teachers and textbooks will come
under the continuing scrutiny of the poorer peas-
ants. The teacher now is to live and work in the
commune where he teaches and be fed and basi-
cally paid by the commune; as a result, he will
more closely identify with local needs, problems,
and production schedules. Student vacations as
such are to be done away with, and time off from
school is to be granted only during the busy farm
seasons. Teachers are expected to do part-time or
full-time farm work on a rotational basis. All this,
it is projected, will break down walls between the
intellectuals and the peasants. reduce distinctions
between mental and manual labor, and inspire
students not to hanker after higher education
only to get away from the farm.
One of the major changes sought by Mao has
been a reduction of the number of years spent in
school. Currently, propaganda speaks of nine
rather than twelve years of precollege school,
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with five years for primary and four years for
middle school. This change, together with the
emphasis on productive labor and political study,
has given rise to a radical reduction of the old
school subject matter, with a weeding out of all
that does not relate to politics or production. The
heavy workload of the old-style schools hacl only
ruined the health and eyesight of students, ac-
cording to the Maoists. The new schools are to
pare the 17 or more courses into four or five basic
categories: Mao's thought, fundamentals for in-
dustry and agriculture, revolutionary literature
and art, military training, and physical education.
New textbooks are being compiled by the
peasants themselves, and best sellers tend to run
heavily to Mao-Lin quotations, recollections of
blood and tears from the old society and how to
raise pigs for the new. The Chinese version of
-Dick and Jane" is to be scratched in favor of
math books featuring the greed of landlords and
courses in commune accounting. Geograph' is to
highlight such pertinent lessons as Sino-Soviet
border clashes, and history is to instill revolution-
ary vigilance by recalling Japanese atrocities.
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Considerable emphasis is placed upon inte-
grating theory with practice where production is
concerned. Students are sent to both factory and
field to experience on-the-job training. The farms
have set up their own factories to facilitate the
learning process. The old ways-drawing pictures
of rice on the blackboard, students moving from
book to book-is repudiated. Critics of the mass
schools are reminded that such schools meet mass
needs, and that even if the peasants do not know
many Chinese characters, they get a good grasp
on farm production.
In recent months there has also been a news-
paper discussion on the relevance of foreign lan-
guage study for rural schools. Some contend that
foreign languages are needed to promote science
and production and to convey China's revolution-
ary experience abroad. Others gruffly deny the
relevance of foreign language study in rural areas,
maintaining it is useless for the vast majority of
peasants and that translation and the conveying
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JUNIOR -MIDDLE STUDENTS
IN AN EAST CHINA
COMMUNE STUDY MAO
of foreign experience is better left to the special-
ists.
URBAN SCHOOLS PLACED
UNDER FACTORY CONTROL
Press and radio discussion of urban school
reforms has followed a similar pattern, calling for
nine-year schools, a simplified curriculum, and
emphasis on politics and production-oriented
training. To this end, worker propaganda teams
from nearby factories, with the support of PLA
units, have moved in to take control over city
schools since last summer. Maoist propaganda
claims that in this way the working class is shat-
tering the ascendancy of intellectuals in the
school system and making the schools more re-
sponsive to the needs of the party, industry, and
agriculture.
Reforms are aimed at greatly reducing ad-
ministrative personnel. Under the new system, the
chairmen of factory revolutionary committees
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In carrying out the proletarian revolution in
education, it is essential to have working class
leadership; it is essential for the masses of
workers to take part and, in cooperation with
Liberation Army fighters, bring about a revolu-
tionary three-in-one combination, together with
the activists among the students, teachers, and
workers in the schools who are determined to
carry the proletarian revolution in education
through to the end. The worker propaganda
teams should stay permanently in the schools
and take part in fulfilling all the tasks in the
schools of struggle-criticism-transformation, and
they will always lead the schools....
Mao Tse-tung, August 1968
serve concurrently as chairmen of school commit-
tees, and, in some areas at least, revolutionary
committees for schools have been dissolved.
Under the old system, intellectuals were too
"concentrated": new reforms call for more
schools on a dispersed basis.
Factories also assume the funding responsi-
bility of the new schools under their jurisdiction.
Because teachers and students are to be integrated
into the controlling factory's production sched-
ule, schools will shed their former "consumer"
status and become producers. Not only is labor
input of teachers and students slated to defray
school costs, it is also expected to build surplus
capital for the state. A few newspaper articles
even question the need of the old structural
apparatus, such as the bureaus and offices of the
former Ministry of Education.
Urban schools are to establish close organiza-
tional ties not only with factories but also with
nearby farms and military units, so that a student
may foster the all around productive and discipli-
nary traits of the new socialist man. Teacher
shortages that result from the increased number
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of schools and the frequent rotation of job assign-
ments are to be met by calling on local peasants
or soldiers for help, or by calling out retired
workers.
Initially, urban students were doing three
days of manual labor and attending school three
days a week, but the system apparently was modi-
fied in some areas to a four to two ratio in favor
of schoolwork. This is another reflection, per-
haps. of continued pulling and hauling within the
leadership over Mao's new programs. A typical
breakdown of a 24-hour school week gives 12
hours to Mao study, 4 hours to industry-agri-
culture, 4 hours to revolutionary literature and
art, 2 hours to military training, and 2 hours to
miscellaneous studies. Again, curriculum reform
demands that subject matter be keyed tQ local
production needs, whether it be tea farm or
foundry. Physics and chemistry are to be taught
primarily as they relate to chemical fertilizer,
water conservation, or the steel mill-not, in an
abstract or theoretical way. Textbook reforin will
teach students how to lay and repair electrical
lines, rather than the theory of its operation.
Courses in middle school physics-such as the
history of the neutron-may be dropped as pedan-
tic or irrelevant.
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Evidence that considerable debate over the
new Mao program is still going on appears even in
the Chinese press. A few participants in the press
debate have expressed concern that the burden of
administering and funding schools might hinder
rather than promote factory production. One
answer to this problem has been to effect a divi-
sion of labor, with factories assuming responsi-
bility for middle schools and neighborhood asso-
ciations administering the primary schools. Some
see the activities of neighborhood associations to
administer school districts as a step toward devel-
oping "urban communes"-the collective living
experiment that fizzled quickly in 1960. Other
critics view the neighborhood associations as not
representative of "working class" leadership; this
view is in turn criticized as impugning the class
character of party organs in the association. More-
over, some urban residents object to efforts by
the neighborhood associations to use after-school
hours to indoctrinate their children, complaining
that these activities diminish the children's contri-
bution to family income. Proponents of after-
hours indoctrination claim that the associations
guard children against class enemies, who are par-
ticularly active after normal school hours.
PROBLEMS IN IMPLEMENTING REFORMS
Once having broken the former discipline of
the old order, many students are now resisting
efforts to reimpose some sort of authority and
regimen in the schools. During the cultural revolu-
tion Maoists gave students license to denounce
and ridicule their teachers boldly. More recently,
seeking to rehabilitate and reaffirm the role of the
teacher, the Maoists have been confronted with
an authority crisis of their own making. Newly
rehabilitated teachers are clearly reluctant to
impose discipline, assign necessary homework, or
give exams for fear of renewed criticism from
their students or for fear of being charged with
"restoring the old." Teachers of this stripe have
been discovered teaching only political tracts,
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even supplanting legitimate academic study with
"Mao-study" to curry favor. Other teachers
assume the attitude that their profession is not
worthwhile, that there is more money in pushing
a cart; they hide themselves on farm or in factory,
disowning the fact they are teachers.
There are students, too, who have become
disillusioned with the need to study when they
know they are destined for simple farm or factory
work, and some refuse to return to school. Other
students equate the call to resume classwork with
a return to reaction; they feel they should remain
free to bombard their teachers at any time. Still
others study only political subjects and dismiss
mathematics and troublesome subjects as reac-
tionary. They come and go as they please, ignore
revolutionary discipline, and practice anarchy.
One senses that the gulf between such students
and the "liberated" teachers is quite broad.
The worker propaganda teams sent into the
schools have experienced problems, too. Workers
find the rehabilitation of schools a long and
thankless task. With a factory job, one sees results
in eight hours, but to remold a stubborn cadre
might take more than three months. Provincial
newspapers upbraid those teams and revolution-
ary committees who tend to postpone educa-
tional work as bothersome or of low priority, or
who wait and see what higher authorities recom-
mend or what neighboring units initiate. Then
there are schools that have viewed the teams'
arrival with hostility, spreading rumors to the
effect that the teams can only be temporary be-
cause they are too simple-minded to sustain con-
trol. Others say that the teams represent a "loss
of freedom" for the school, that the teams have
come to seize power from the school's revolu-
tionary committee.
OUTLOOK
There appears to be little doubt that, for the
near terns, China's schools will be run ostensibly
19 September 1969
SECRET
Approved For Release 2006/05/24: CIA-RDP79-00927A007300050002-7
 Approved For Release 2006/
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the way Mao says they should, with primary
emphasis on a pragmatic melding of formal
schooling and practical labor. Mao's goal of pro-
ducing a generation of both "red" and "expert"
youths, however, faces formidable obstacles. Over
the short run, Mao's formula for training the
youth may pay dividends for an economy that
has a great need for manual and skilled laborers.
It will also accomplish Mao's intention of thor-
oughly intimidating China's professional teachers
and thus make them more submissive to his direc-
tives. The loss already of three years of higher
education, however, is bound to have been a
setback to the training of the scientific and tech-
nical personnel needed to sustain economic and
military hardware development.
Mao obviously felt that the school system as
it existed prior to the Cultural Revolution did not
Special Report
meet the needs of the state he envisioned. Initi-
ally the schools, like the economy, were heavily
dependent on Soviet aid and experience. When
Mao embarked on a policy of national self-reli-
ance in the economic realm after the leap for-
ward, he suspected that the schools had not fol-
lowed suit; they were graduating more Soviet-
oriented scientists and technicians than the newly
"independent" economy could usefully absorb.
In this sense Mao's educational reforms were
aimed at striking a balance between China's
immediate economic needs and its more sophisti-
cated, long-range aspirations. Ultimately, though,
if Peking is to modernize a relatively primitive
economy, it must look to outside experience in
science and technology. For the future, the
schools are likely to win Mao's favor in direct
proportion to their success in Sinifying foreign
technology.
SECRET
19 September 1969
25X1
Approved For Release 2006/05/24: CIA-RDP79-00927A007300050002-7
 SA ooo;o ed For Release 2006/05/24: CIA-RDP79-00927AO07300050002-7
Secret
Approved For Release 2006/05/24: CIA-RDP79-00927AO07300050002-7