CHINA: EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001100130086-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 18, 2008
• Sequence Number: 86
• Publication Date: June 20, 1972
• Content Type: IM

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DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Memorandum
China: Experiment in Education
CIA
Secret
u 411 CCThT SERVICES BRANCH S 0
FILE COPY 20 June 1972
No. 2045/72
DD NOT flFTRf1V
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0.U%_J rt-,L, .i
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Directorate of intelligence
20 June 1972
Mao Tse-tung has long held the belief that China's educational system
fostered a politically unreliable elite not responsive to the needs of the
working masses. In 1966 he moved decisively to change the system, in effect
closing all institutions of higher learning for a period of four years. The
closings, coming as they did at the start of the Cultural Revolution, occurred
in response to immediate political needs. l;;it they were justified in terms of
the need to overhaul completely China's educational establishment. The
system has been in a state of flux ever since.
There are many elements in the Maoist prescription for education, but
essentially the aim is to develop a system that produces graduates with a
correct blend of political orientation and competence in a production-related
field. To this end, the regime enunciated a plan to lower admission require-
ments drastically, to reduce the time spent in college, and to devise a
curriculum emphasizing practical subjects closely attuned to China's im-
mediate production needs. Many of these goals had been established earlier,
but official and Red Guard propaganda during the Cultural Revolution
claimed that they had been thwarted by a rigid and unresponsive educational
bureaucracy generally out of sympathy with Mao's ainms.
The reopening of Tsinghua University in 1970-after four years of
debate-began the implementation of the Maoist reforms. Before even a year
had elapsed, however, signs began to emerge in the official media that the
reform system was experiencing serious difficulties. The press hinted that
Peking was having second thoughts about the viability of the new syrtem.
Following a lengthy but unheralded conference on national education
last summer, the regime began gradually but unmistakably to retreat from
the more extreme proposals. These modifications and the heavy enrollment
of seemingly better qualified students this spring suggest that the quality of
education in China is on its way toward being upgraded. Such a partial
return to past practices carries with it the prospect of eventually reviving the
tensions that helped to stimulate the Cultural Revolution.
Note: This memorandum was prepared by the Office of Current Intelligence and co-
ordhia,'ed with the Office of Scientific Intelligence.
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The Revolution 1966-68
1. In June 1966, Peking announced an unusual decision to revise the
examination system for universities and senior middle schools and to post-
pone 1966 school enrollment for six months in order to work out a plan that
would "transform the education system completely." Officially, the decision
concerned only universities and senior middle schools (roughly equivalent to
senior high school), but it was applied to primary and junior middle schools
as well. This move was clearly related to the broader political struggles then
convulsing the country-indeed, questions of educational reform played only
a minor role. But the linking of the educational question to the wider
political upheaval in effect brought higher education to a complete halt, not
for six months but for four years.
2. Within a month all schools throughout China had closed, freeing
some 800,000 university students and about 14 million middle-school stu-
dents to take part in the mass political campaigns of the Cultural Revolution.
During the hectic summer of 1966, the students-relieved of classroom
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responsibilities and encouraged by the regime to rebel against established
authority-launched an all-out attack on what they knew best, the educa-
tional system. Schools in the university district northwest of Peking, notably
Tsinghua and Peking universities, set the example for the rest of the country.
Mass student organizations, known as "Red Guards," were formed and began
publishing their own wall posters and newspapers. Many students indulged in
personal vendettas, subjecting individual professors to intense criticism and
humirtating struggle sessions for having given poor grader;. Such personal
grievances quickly escalated into calls to reorient higher education away
from strictly academic pursuits toward the mastering of practical skills
related to production needs. Medical students complained, for example, that
they were over-trained in medical school because in practice they would
never encounter the exotic diseases they had stuJied or have access to the
relatively sophisticated equipment available in some medical schools.
3. In a wall poster debate ever educational reform, students criticized
aspects of the educational system that were holdovers from traditional
Chinese education. They objected to studying history, which they saw as the
record of a feudal past having no relevance to a revolutionary society. They
attacked the method of learning lessons by rote, saying it left them no
opportunity for questions, or even discussion. They seve-.ly criticized the
authoritarian rule of the teacher, who allowed students to speak only when
spoken to, invited no discussion, and tolerated no disagreement. In addition
to freedom in the classroom, they demanded the freedom to choose their
own course of study in lieu of assignments by #hc state to particular
disciplines. These demands no doubt expressed genuine student discontent,
particularly on the part of elements who were brought into the educational
machinery in the previous few years in response to Maoist prescriptions and
found it hard going. There is little doubt, however, that student grievances
were manipulated for political advantage by radical elements in China's
leadership.
4. Summing up the students' proposals, the regime issued a "discussion
draft" on a revised education system. The draft, as revealed in the Red
Guard press, called for abolishing the stiff entrance examination and enroll-
ing students on the basis of recommendation by their school. The draft
suggested that academic performance be determined by group discussion
rather than by grades and examination; that all schools adopt the half-work
half-study system, in which students spend half their time in manual labor;
that urban universities move to the villages and military farms, particularly in
the frontier provinces, with arts faculties being the first to go; and that
academic titles, distinctions between major and minor universities-including
the appellation "first" and "second" class university-and special privileges
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granted to more important universities be abolished. The draft recommended
that middle-school students, wh'le they were in school, spend one year
working on farms, in factories, or in the armed forces.
5. These recommendations reflected Mao's own dissatisfaction with the
educational system. He saw distinctions based on academic performance as
artificial and irrelevant. In his view, China needed technicians who could
relate to the needs of the working masses, contribute to production, and
improve on existing techniques; China did not need scholars who sought
knowledge for its own sake and could not transform their knowledge into
resources for production. Mao maintained that such scholars not only were a
luxury China could 1)1 afford, but also were politically unreliable. Scholars,
he said, regarded themselves as an elite, removed from the everyday prob-
lems of the vast majority of Chinese people and contemptuous of the
uneducated working masses. By extension, this meant the scholars were
contemptuous of the one-time peasant who was the leader of China.
6. Mao's goal was an educational system that would ingrain in its
graduates a high deg; :~e of political consciousness, concern for the well-being
of the masses and a genuine desire to serve them as well as competence in a
production-related field. He felt that students, after 16 years of schcoiing,
were overeducated for the tasks they would be called on to perform in
China's still-developing economy. The reforms proposed during the Cvltural
Revolution grew out of Mao's attempt to find a short-cut to the creation of
large numbers of intellectuals who were both red and expert and could
answer China's immediate production needs.
7. Many of these concepts had becn put forward before, only to be
scuttled by those within the party and the bureaucracy who favored a more
rational approach to curing China's educational ills. Frustrated with the
delays and setbacks at the top, Mao sought to overturn the educational
structure from below. The scope of the reform measures and, more impor-
tantly, the manner in which they were imposed attest to Mao's deep
suspicions about intellectuals and to his willingness to initiate large-scale
social projects to achieve his goals. The ability of Mao and his supporters to
move decisively in the educational realm was, of course, greatly expedited by
the simultaneous smashing of the Communist party apparatus that had
steadfastly resisted the earlier attempts at reform.
8. This opposition had been rooted in a genuine distrust of the efficacy
of the measures prescribed by Mao and the radical ideologues who echoed
him and elaborated his ideas. The party bureaucrats in charge of China's
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er:jcational system were convinced that short-cuts were not really feasible
for China; if the country was to pull itself up by its bootstraps, the only
method open was to emulate more advanced societies in training the most
promising of China's youth in the skills and techniques necessary to such
achievement. This, in turn, implied an emphasis on specialization, on lan-
guage, and on technical skills. In short, education had to be elitist, and
rewards should go to t! ,ose most capable of learning; in practice, this meant
students with privileged and cultured backgrounds. The great mass of stu-
dents from peasant and worker backgrounds fell by the wayside. This
created resentment, in part because precisely those peasant virtues that
official propaganda extolled proved to be of no value in the educational
environment.
9. In fact, the Cultural Revolution in its early stages divided the student
body along the faultline of privilege; the peasant students, brought into the
university system in the mid-1960s, partly as window dressing to reduce
Maoist pressures on the educational bureaucracy, were pitted against the
more gifted students from more privileged background, who, naturally, were
the favorites of their teachers. As the Cultural Revolution progressed, this
dividing line tended to break down. By late 1967 and 1968 factionalization
on China's campuses (where some sbndents continued to live) had reached
epic proportions, and "principled" clashes had degenerated into mindless
fighting among largely inchoate groups of students.
The Damper Applied, 1968-69
10. In mid-1968, in the midst of nationwide chaos and confusion, the
regime decided to dampen the fires. The impact was felt immediately on the
nation's campuses. Worker propaganda teams entered universities throughout
the country. Their first order of business was to restore order. Backed up by
contingents from the
armed forces, the worker
teams carried out their
task with thoroughness.
The Red Guard groups
were disbanded, and the
more fractious students
were sent packing to the
hinterlands for "labor re-
form."
11. The propaganda
teams were given a longer
It is still necessary to have universities; here I refer
mainly to colleges of science and engineering. How-
ever, it is essential to shorten the length of schooling,
revolutionize education, put proletarian politics in
command, and take the road of the Shanghai Machine
Tools Plant in training technicians from among the
workers. Students should be selected from among
workers and peasants with practical experience, and
they should return to production after a few years'
study.
Mao Tse-tung, July 1968
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term mission as well. Their tasks were described in general terms in the flood
of propaganda that accompanied the issuance of Mao's July 1968 directive
on university education, which signaled the regime's intent to begin the long,
arduous process of renewing higher education in China. The teams, in
conjunction with the armed forces, were to assume the administration of the
universities, revise the curriculum, direct the compilation of new teaching
materials, and assemble a faculty and a student body. These, obviously, were
tasks the teams were not equipped to handle. In fact, little headway was
made, and the teams confined themselves to conducting political thought
sessions for the few teachers and students who remained in the universities.
In the meantime, much discussion and considerable disagreement took place
over how to implement the injunctions vaguely outlined in Mao's latest
directive.
12. Full-scale resumption of classes was delayed further by yet another
Mao directive, issued in December 1968, ordering all students and virtually
all other unemployed urban dwellers to proceed to the countryside where
they were to undergo re-education indefinitely. This directive, in effect,
The reopening college door: Worker-peasant-soldier students enter Tsinghua University.
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removed from the cities the very same school-age youth who would make
the most likely candidates for a reassembled student body. They were soon
joined by teachers and other professional personnel who were thought to
need more manual labor to divest them of their elitist pretensions. With most
teachers and students in the countryside, the work of reforming the uni-
versities prior to the resumption of classes obviously was set back.
The Universities Reopen, 1970-71
13. In July 1970, two years after the first worker propaganda team had
entered Tsinghua, the party theoretical journal Red Flag devoted an entire
issue to the problem of how to run universities of science and engineering.
The propaganda team at Tsinghua contributed the major article, which
contained the news that the university had reopened and was prepared to
enroll a limited number of students. Since then Tsinghua has served as a
pace-setter for universities throughout China.
14. The Red Flag article revealed that Tsinghua had been engaged in
"experimental' class work for about a year. The faculty, greatly reduced
from the days before the Cultural Revolution, consisted of some members of
the original teaching staff plus a number of workers, peasants, and soldiers
hired as both full- and part-time teachers. The teacher shortage, which would
plague reopened universities over the next two years, was not yet a problem
at Tsinghua, where the student body was down from 12,000 to ap-
proximately 2,800.
Linking theory with practice: Tsinghua University students assemble trucks
at the school-run motor vehicle plant.
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15, The admissions requirements established at Tsinghua attempted to
strike a balance between Mao's desire for more children from worker and
peasant families and the university's efforts to maintain at least some of the
high standards that had made it China's foremost engineering school.
Emphasis was placed on enrolling politically correct workers, peasants and
soldiers, with three or more years of practical work experience, who were
about 20 years of age and had at least a junior middle-school education. Age
and educational requirements were waived for workers and peasants with
abundant practical experience. Tsinghua said it would enroll some young
intellectuals who had been sent to the countryside two years earlier. At this
point, the Tsinghua curriculum was a hodge-podge of politics, standard
course work, vocational training, and manual labor. To enable students to
put into practice what they had learned in the classroom-a basic tenet of
Mao's thoughts on education-Tsinghua set up its own factories and estab-
lished working relationships with other factories. There is some evidence to
suggest that the less qualified students-primarily over-age workers and
peasants admitted without regard to prior academic training-were confined
to vocational training courses where they concentrated on improving tech-
nical skills. Nevertheless,
more than
regular academic classes.
a few poorly qualified students were allowed in
16. The question of reopening liberal arts universities was postponed.
One reason was that the regime, trying to boost the economy, gave the
training of technicians a clear priorty over people trained in literature and
arts. Moreover, the question of liberal arts students raised sensitive political
issues because it was among them that political heresy first surfaced. An-
other factor contributing to the delay was probably the question of how to
link liberal arts education with prr,ductive work. In theory, at least, school-
run factories provide an opportunity for practical application of scientific
knowledge, keep students in close tcuch with workers and peasants, and
permit some contribution to production. But there are no factories for the
humanities. The regime grasped this nettle in June 1971 by announcing that
liberal arts students were to take the whole country as their classroom. In
order to compare past misery under the Kuomintang regime with present
happiness under the socialist system, history students were organized into
"field units" to interview village elders. Literature and arts students were
urged to create works portraying the revolutionary enthusiasm of the work-
ers, peasants and soldiers by drawing from everyday experiences, while being
careful to cast these deeds in the appropriate heroic images.
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Young intellectuals working in the countryside.
17. As more universities of science and technology began to reopen on
an experimental basis, it became clear that the Tsingl eta iiiodeI was not being
implemented uniformly in each locality. Significantly, some universities
lowered the practical work requirement from three to two years. This put
young people, who had been rusticated for two years following Mao's
directive, among the main candidates for the crucial first enrollment. More-
over, as a reflection of the political situation oI' the time when "support-the-
left? personnel from the armed services exercised virtually unquestioned
control over a variety of' civilian enterprises, a disproportionate number of
soldiers were enrolled in the universities. They were selected by the military
control committees which held the real power in the universities. In this
revised system the main features of Mao's reform program nevertheless were
retained. Many schools established branches in the countryside where teach-
ers and students--despite their seemingly strong working-class credentials-
were obliged to immerse themselves in manual labor. Courses contained a
heavy (lose of politics, drawn chiefly from the thoughts of Mao. Worker-
peasant-soldier teachers gave lectures along with university professors.
Woricer-peasant-soldier students, convinced that their proletarian back-
grounds made them ideologically pure and tieterminetl to shatter the old
myth that the teacher was the absolute authority, freely interrupted the
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professors to lecture them about their political shortcomings. Classroom
time was divided among academic training, political study, manual labor, .nd
military training. Although some genuine academic training was conducted
for the first time in four years, its ef'f'ectiveness was undermined by if host of
difficulties.
Problems Under tie Revised System 1970-71
18. Mao's political philosophy stresses the innate superiority of the
working class and the belief that sufficient political indoctrination will
convince people to subordinate their own interests to the needs of the state.
This formula, however, did not deal directly with the practical problems
inherent in putting it into practice. In fact, the propaganda teams, inexperi-
enced in college administration and uncomfortable in their new posts,
performed poorly. Mainland media, taking the teams to task, revealed that
many of them freely admitted their own ignorance and shied away from
reorganizing the universities. Others, ignoring instructions that they solicit
the views of experienced educators, promoted educational reform as they
saw fit. The result was chaos in the universities and little progress toward the
full-scale resumption of higher education.
19. The students posed a different problem. Those with limited school-
ing were disheartened when they found themselves unable to cope with
college-level material. In fact, Red Flag tried to boost the morale of worker-
peasant-soldier students who were "unable to understand the teachers'
lectures" by laying the blame on unsympathetic professors. Academically
qualified students, on the other hand, saw little point in studying since they
were destined to spend their lives doing manual labor regardless of their
university education. Mao had s tid they were to resume working after a few
years of study, and in most cases this meant a return to their original work
units-somewhat better trained perhaps, but with small hope of progressing
much beyond their present stations. The more radical among the students
regarded a resumption of educational activity as a sellout to the very
academic authorities they had attacked in the past and a compromise of
Maoist ideals. Serious-minded students were frustrated by the heavily
politicized course content, the reduction of classroom time in favor of
military training and manual labor, and the poor quality of many of their
classmates and teachers. The revised system offered students of every stripe
scant reason to study, and in fact they studied very little.
20. There can be little doubt that the reform program as carried out in
the school year of 1970-71 seriously undermined the morale of the teachers.
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propaganda earns with teaching methods
balked at having to teach u
,
n-
qualified students, and resented the presence of worker-peasant-soldier
teachers who wasted valuable classroom time with their political lectures.
Realizing that they were evaluated on the basis of political reliability rather
than the quality of their instruction, teachers were afraid to concentrate on
academic course content lest they come under renewed attacks for pro-
moting a "bourgeois" educational system. But they were equally afraid to
give political lectures that might contain "mistakes."
21. As more students enrolled in universities, the regime confronted a
critical shortage of qualified professors. Some had died; a few had even
committed suicide during the stress and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.
Some, after four years of inactivity, were in poor health or simply too old to
resume teaching. There were no new teachers to replace them because
normal schools had been closed for four years alor.g with the others. Given
the unsettled classroom conditions, many teachers who had been assigned to
,.,,,