INTELLIGENCE REPROT THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION IN COMMUNIST CHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001000010035-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 97
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 3, 2009
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: May 23, 1969
• Content Type: IR

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SECRET
ILLEGIB
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Report
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION
IN COMMUNIST CHINA
(Reference Title: POLO XXXVI)
SECRET
RSS No. 0036/69
23 May 1969
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For three years the educational system in Communist
China has been totally disrupted and out of production.
University and middle school students closed their class-
rooms or converted them into revolutionary headquarters
to spend their time in Red Guard activism. The school
system was scorned, administrators and teachers humiliated,
and intellectuals deprived of status and respect. It
appears likely that the "radicalization" of curriculum,
faculty, and students will continue for some time. to the
detriment of objective research and teaching.
The findings of this study, in broad terms, are
that "educational revolution" is basically a function of
Mao's distrust of the intellectual and his desire to create
a Yew Chinese Man. This new man, the "revolutionary suc-
cessor," is primarily a product of his education. Mao
believes that in the past Liu Shao-chi and others dis-
torted and emasculated educational reforms designed to
create the New Chinese Man. This belief of Mao's, to
some extent true, led Mao to launch a wholesale assault
on the educational system as part of the Cultural
Revolution.
In the past, Mao's search for fanatical devotion
has led to a compromise of academic quality in favor of
political reliability. The same is likely to be true in
the present instance because the educational system is
asked to serve conflicting goals. The main thrust of
the current reforms is to cut down the time spent in
formal education and to revise the curricula to produce
more narrowly trained specialists. If the emphasis on
ideological purity is maintained as the primary purpose
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of education; then the new policies could be disastrous,
coming on the heels of three years with practically
no education whatsoever. If, on the other hand, empha-
sis is placed on the concrete application of revised
curricula and their substantive content, then the impact
of the Cultural Revolution could be somewhat mitigated.
This study was produced solely by the DD/1 Special
Research Staff. The research analyst in charge was
Chief, DD/I Special Research Staff
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THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION
IN COMMUNIST CHINA
Contents
Page
Introduction ......................................... 1
Prologue: Mao and the Intellectuals ................. 4
1. EDUCATION IN COMMUNIST CHINA: THE PRELUDE
TO THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Introduction .. .. ... ... ........ . ... .7
Education and Politics: The Great Leap
Forward ... . . ........... 8
Education and Politics: 1960-1962 ........9
Education and the 10th Plenum of the
Central Committee: September 1962 ........... 11
The Socialist Education Campaign: 1962-1965..12
A. "Fewer But Better"..........., ? . .13
B. "The Construction of a New Socialist
Countryside." ... .. ? .14
C. Half-Work, Half-Study Schools .......... 16
Half-Work, Half-Study: A Model
County .......... ...................18
Half-Work, Half-Study: The
Industrial Model ........ ...........19
Half-Work, Half-Study: The
University Model .. .................20
Half-Work, Half-Study: Summary ...... 21
Political Control of the Full-Time
Education System .......... .22
A. Political Control: The University..... 22
Summary ... . ........ . 25
B. Political Control: The Middle School..26
Summary ........... .. . .... .28
C. Political Control: The Primary
.School..... .... . ....... . . . . .. . .. .29
Entrance Requirements and Fees ...... . . . .. . . . . .31
Job Assignments .............. .. .. . . . . . .33
Student Morale and Political Attitudes ........ 34
The Prelude to the Cultural Revolution:
Conclusions ..................................36
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SF.C.TZ F'T.
Page
II. THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
The Closing of the Schools .................... 39
The Red Guard Reign of Terror .................41
The Reinstatement of Authority... ............. 45
A. The Worker Peasant Propaganda Teams....46
B. The Thought Reform of the
Intellectuals ........................ 50
C. The Exodus ............. 52
................
Educational Reform ........ . .. ... .. .57
A. Educational Reform: ~Higher*Education..61
Tungchi University: The University
Model ...............................61
Summary ...... .. ... .. ........ The Shanghai Machine Tool Plant:
The Factory Model ................... 65
Summary ....... .............. .. .. 66
The Shanghai Institute of Mechanical
Engineering and the Peking Aviation
Institute: The Research Factor.....67
Summary ..... ........ ...............69
B. Educational Reform: Primary and
Middle Schools ........... .... .......69
Primary and Middle Schools: The
Rural Experiment ..... ..............70
Half-Work, Half-Study Schools ........ 73
Rural Schools: Summary ...... ......74
Primary and Middle Schools: The
Urban Experiment ....................76
Middle Schools .......................77
Primary Schools... ........ ..........?9
Half-Work, Half-Study Schools., ...... 80
Urban Schools: Summary ..............82
III. CONCLUSIONS AND SPECULATIONS ..................83
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Oi j ).RJ1 1
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION IN COMMUNIST CHINA
The effect of the cultural revolution upon educa-
tion in China has had two major facets, each with its
own specific outcomes. First, the cultural revolution
has thus far denied thrae years of formal education to
all school-age individuals, and it has shattered the
educational system. The denial of education to students
and potential students means that some 340,000 students
will graduate from an institution of higher learning
without completing . formal course of study, and approxi-
mately half a million students will either enter such
institutions without adequate high school preparation
(by Chinese standards), or will fail to enter at all.
Many more thousands of students will "graduate" from
high school without completing their formal training.
Second, the student-teacher relationship at all
levels of the educational process has been effectively
destroyed by a combination of Red Guard terrorism and
the deliberate downgrading of teachers by the regime
through the so-called take-over of education by workers
and peasants. Curriculum reform, of which we have but
a few glimmerings at this time, will undoubtedly round
out the destruction by seriously reducing the amount of
basic information and systematic analysis of information
disseminated through the educational process. Thus the
core of China's educational system has been deliberately
sacrificed to the ideals of Mao Tse-tung's particular
utopia.
Th9 nullification of the educational system was,
and is, a deliberate political act demonstrating one of
Mao Tse-tung's most immutable values: that intellectuals
have proclivities that make them suspect as members of
Mao's ideal society. Mao's long-standing distrust
of the intellectual is based upon the realization
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that the core of China's intelligentsia was educated in
the West. Thus the intellectual is either the product
of a "bourgeois" society or, for graduates since 1949,
the product of an educational system dominated by the'
"bourgeois" intellectual and therefore probably contam-
inated by non-proletarian ideology. Students educated
in the Soviet Union are, for obvious reasons, equally
suspect. Mao's deep-rooted suspicion of the intellec-
tual comes into conflict with another of his major goals;
the rapid industrialization of China in order to achieve
great power status for the People's Republic. To achieve
this goal China needed to develop the technical and
managerial skills upon which the modern industrialized
state is built. Such skills are the product of the edu-
cational system of the society that seeks to create them,
and are held and manipulated by individuals whose values
tend to be pragmatic and universalistic. Such values
are anathema to Mao Tse-tung.
The long-range goal of Mao was [and remains] to
politicize the intellectuals who were a product of the
West, and to educate a new Chinese intellectual who was
both politically reliable and professionally expert--the
ideal-type of the intellectual has been defined by the
regime as "Fed and Expert." As the educational system
was dominated by Western-trained minds, the politiciza-
tion of the older intellectuals and of the next genera-
tion of intellectuals had to be carried out by agents
external to the educational system. Prior to the cul-
tural revolution, this agent was the Chinese Communist
Party which attempted to assert absolute control over
all facets of the educational system.
The Party's control of the system extended from
the Ministries of Education and Higher Education down to
every school in the nation. The representatives of the
Party in a given school wielded more influence over the
institution's processes than professional educators. The
Party controlled curriculum content, faculty appointments
and promotions, student activities, and all other phases
of education and related programs. Beyond this, political
indoctrination permeated the content of the curriculum,
with specific periods set aside for small group discus-
sions of political affairs, ideological training, and
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current problems. The student daily regimen, from dawn
until dusk--literally--was under the strict control of
the Party.
To the extent that Mao believed the educational
system had failed to achieve his goals, the Party had
failed. The story of the cultural revolution is the
history of a Party purge, and the interaction between
the cultural revolution and China's educational system
is primarily one of a struggle to achieve political
goals.
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Prologue: Mao and the Intellectual
In his address to the Yenan Conference of Writers
and Artists in May of 1942, Mao Tse-tung gave a clear
expression of his attitude toward the intellectual.
Furthermore, in describing his personal experience as a
student, Mao stated clearly the contempt he felt (and
still feels) for the elitist attitudes of the intel-
ligentsia:
Let me tell you of my own experience; let
me tell you how my feelings toward the people
changed. I was once a student, and in school
I acquired student habits and manners. For
instance, I was embarrassed when I had to
carry my bags on a bamboo pole in the presence
of my fellow students. They were so refined
that they could not stand having any weight
press upon their shoulders and disdained the
very thought of carrying anything in their
hands! At that time I was convinced that
only intellectuals were clean, that workers,
peasants, and soldiers were unclean. I
would therefore readily borrow clothes from
an intellectual, but never from a worker, or
a peasant, or a soldier because I thought
that their clothes would be unclean.
During the revolution I began to live
among workers, peasants, and soldiers.
Gradually I began to know them, and they
also began to know me. Then, and then only,
did the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois senti-
ments inculcated in me by bourgeois schools
change fundamentally! Ever since then, when-
ever I compare unreformed intellectuals with
workers, peasants, and soldiers, I realize
that not only were the minds of those intel-
lectuals unclean but their bodies were also
unclean. The cleanest people in the world
are the workers and peasants. Even though
their hands may be soiled and their feet
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smeared with cow dung, nevertheless they
are cleaner than the bourgeoisie and the
petty-bourgeoisie. That is what I mean
by a transformation of sentiments--a
changing o'er from one class to another.
Mao's concern with the elitist attitudes of the
Chinese intellectual stems not only from his goal of
achieving an egalitarian society and his basic distrust
of the "bourgeois" background of the intellectual, but
also from the status accorded the intelligentsia in
Imperial China. Traditionally, the scholar-gentry formed
the backbone of the imperial political system, and the
value structure of Chinese society established the scholar-
gentry as the ruling elite. Mao is convinced that if his
revolution is to succeed, the legitimacy granted to the
scholar-gentry has to be transferred to the Chinese Com-
munist Party.
Social revolutions are directed against elites
which function as a ruling class, and the value structures
that legitimize them. Mao knew in 1942 that the political
poi;;er of a leadership group does not automatically guarantee
prestige--the esteem and respect of the members of the
society. Certainly the Party can rule without prestige,
but without prestige another stratum of society can either
explicitly or implicitly challenge the ruling group for
authority within the society. The intellectuals in China
form a social elite that carries with it, by definition,
prestige. Mao's consistent distrust of the intelligentsia
is based upon his understanding that traditional values
still exist in the society, and that esteem for the intel-
lectual constitutes an implicit challenge to the authority
of the Party.
The challenge to the laity is located in the
society's esteem for the intellectual, but it is in the
functions the intellectual performs for the society and
the state that his leadership role becomes explicit.
Apart from his obvious role as the managerial and tech..
nical expert, the intellectual also functions as the
specific agent transmitting s;'stematic knowledge to the
society through the educational process. Thus the intel-
lectual, regardless of the suspicion and fear with which
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he is viewed by the poiitic al leadership, is performing
critical functions for the state and the society. The
significance of the intellectual and his role in society
can be seen by members of the society from the primary
school to the specialized institutes for research and
development.
Mao has attempted to curb the influence of the
intellectual by establishing the Party as an independent
politicization and control agent in the educational system,
by attempting to recruit intellectuals into the Party,
and by establishing a "watch-dog" organizational structure
in industry. Similarly, since the earliest days in Yenan,
the Party has engaged in campaigns designed to inculcate
political reliability in the intellectual while attempt-
ing to downgrade his status in the society. The events
of the cultural revolution, however, are the clearest
indication that 26 years after Mao's speech at Yenan the
intellectual has yet to become a trusted ally in the con-
tinuing social revolution, and that Mao's basic fear of
the intellectual is still one of his most deeply-held
convictions. Furthermore, it appears that the impact of
the cultural revolution uoon the intellectuals will be
greater than Mao's punitive reaction to the period of
"blooming and contending" in May of 1957.
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I. EDUCATION IN COMMUNIST CHINA:
THE PRELUDE TO THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
The fear and suspicion that characterizes Mao's view
of the intelligentsia as a stratum in China's society has
had a marked effect on the regime's policies for education.
The value conflict between the necessity of developing a
society capable of creating a modernized, industrialized
state, while at the same time producing a politically
reliable citizen imbued with the proper "revolutionary
spirit" has led to considerable variation in educational
policies. The basic goal of combining professional
expertise and political reliability is not beyond the
capacity of most educational systems; all societies use
the educational system as a major agent of political
socialization. China, however, like many other moderniz-
ing states, is faced with the problem of imbuing its
citizens with values significantly at variance with those
of the pre-industrial and pre-revolutionary period. As
the parents of the new generation were schooled under
the pre-Communist regime, their ability to politically
socialize their children into the new value structure
is not high. The primary responsibility for political
socialization is therefore placed in the hands of the
schools.
The distinct problem for China, however, is that
the degree of political socialization required goes far
beyond that which is necessary for simple loyalty to the
state. It requires a commitment to Mao and the Party
that can best be described as a requirement for fanaticism;
thus, the Chinese educational system is charged with
producing citizens with both specific levels of expertise
and a fanatical commitment to Mao Tse-tung.
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Education and Politics: The Great Leap Forward
In many ways, the educational "reforms" introduced
during the Great Leap Forward of 1958-60 reflect the more
extreme views of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese leadership
and were definite harbingers of the reforms introduced
during the cultural revolution. Indeed, current report-
ing in the Chinese press and radio broadcasts refer con-
sistently to this origin of the present policies. In
1958, the educational system was instructed to expand
its facilities to accommodate a 45 percent increase in
the number of students in the academic year 1958-59--a
"leap" from 441,000 students enrolled in colleges and
universities in 1957-58 to a projected 800,000 in 1958-59.
The number of students with worker-peasant backgrounds
was also to be significantly increased, and to aid in
the development of an egalitarian society, students were
to combine formal academic training with productive labor.
Manual labor had been the lot of Chinese students for
some time, but the new emphasis placed by the regime on
this aspect of its policy indicated that once more the
distinction between mental work and physical labor, and
the elitist attitudes fostered by the former, were to
come under attack. The attack was to take the common
form of glorifying manual labor and those who performed
this labor. Furthermore, by sending students to the com-
munes and factories to participate in manual labor under
the direction of the peasant and worker, the industrial
and agricultural worker was given official status as a
"teacher." A State Council directive of September 1958
described the policy this way:
The Party line in educational work seeks
to make education serve the proletariat
politically and to unite education with
productive labor. In order to implement
this line, educational work must be led
by the Party. Marxist-Leninist political
and ideological indoctrination must be
carried out in all schools to indoctrinate
the teachers and students with the class
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view-point of the working class: the mass
view-point, the labor view-point, or the
view-point calling for the integration
of mental labor with physical labor, and
the dialectical materialist view-point.
The future direction is for schools to run
factories and farms, and for factories and
agricultural cooperatives to establish
schools...
In accordance with this directive and others, the
educational system not only sent millions of students
to the fields and factories, but also began to develop
"part-work, part-study" schools. In a parallel develop-
ment during 1959 and 1960, schools and universities
created ancillary factories and work-shops, while the
larger factories established general education facilities.
The communes began to establish "part-farming, part-study"
schools where the students would spend part of the day
studying and the other part laboring in the fields.
These programs suffered severe cutbacks after 1960 when
the extremes of the Great Leap Forward combined with
administrative ineptitude and natural disasters to create
an economic and political crisis.
Education and Politics: 1960-1962
Following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward
and the withdrawal of Soviet technicians in 1960, there
was a short period of retrenchment in educational policy
as the Chinese attempted to lift themselves up by their
boot-straps. The extent to which Mao's more extreme
views were being modified can be seen in an article writ-
ten by Kao Chih-kuo, 1st Secretary of the Party Committee
for Yunnan University, and published in the Kwangming
Daily of 7 April 1961. This same article was reprinted
in the People's Daily a week later. Kao wrote:
To say that education must be combined
with productive labor is not to mean at
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all that work in schools need not center
on teaching, for it must ...In the midst
of great leaps forward, all undertakings
are required to leap forward. Everybody
wants to forge ahead. Manpower is needed
everywhere. Schools are required to send
students to take part in labor. How are
we to deal with this? Obviously, this
question needs serious consideration. In
the first place, we must not forget that
our schools are schools, in which the
normal order in teaching and learning must
not be disturbed at random. Those students
who should be sent to take part in labor
outside must do so without failure. Those
who should not be sent must remain. Fewer
students should be sent if fewer are required.
Wherever possible, the sending of students
to take part in labor outside must be delayed.
..To enable students to digest and consolidate
the knowledge they have acquired and to train
their ability of independent contemplation,
they must be assured of adequate time for
private studies and exercise.
Kuo's article was strongly worded, but its repub-
lication by People's Daily indicated the extent to which
educational policy was being modified in the aftermath
of the Great Leap Forward. The over-emphasis on manual
labor and intensive political indoctrination that ac-
companied the Great Leap Forward drastically lowered
China's academic standards, but the years 1960-62 were
marked by attempts to tighten academic standards, close
questionable and inefficient schools, and restore the
dignity of teachers and college faculties. By the end
of 1962, however, the regime--or at least Mao Tse-tung--
began to feel that the pendulum had swung too far the
other way.
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Education and the 10th Plenum of the Central Committee:
September 1962
At the 10th Plenum of the Central Committee held
in August-September 1962, Mao began to reassert the
attitudes and positions that were so apparent during the
Great Leap Forward. Of particular significance to this
analysis was the concern Mao expressed for the problem
of "revolutionary successors" and intellectual dissidence.
Concerning youth and revolutionary successors, Mao said:
This country of ours must grasp well,
know well, and study well this question.
We must acknowledge that classes and class
struggles will exist for a long time to
come, and that the reactionary classes
may stage a comeback. We must heighten
our vigilance and successfully educate
the young people, the cadres, and the
masses...
...If our sons go revisionist and take
the opposite course, then although ours
is still called a socialist country, it is
actually a capitalist one.... Therefore,
from now on, we must discuss the matter
every year, every month, every day. We
must discuss it at every general meeting,
every Party Congress and every plenary
session, so that we may take a more sober
Marxist-Leninist line on this question.
Mao's obvious concern with regard to the young successors
to his revolution was complemented by a remark later in
the same speech directed at anti-Party dissidence among
the intellectuals:
Isn't the writing of novels the fashion of
the day now? The use of novels to carry out
anti-Party activities is a great invention.
To overthrow a political power, it is always
necessary first of all to create public
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opinion, to do work in the ideological
sphere. This is true for the revolution-
ary class as well as for the counterrevolu-
tionary class...
Mao clearly demonstrated both his concern over the youth
who would inherit the revolution and his apprehensiveness
about the political reliability of the intellectuals.
These two thoughts were intimately connected, though,
in that China's youth were being educated by the same
stratum of society that was producing anti-Party novels.
Mao was clearly concerned, as his later policies demon-
strated, over the probability that the students, as they
progressed through the educational system, would be in-
fected by "bourgeois" intellectual attitudes. Mao's con-
cern was far wider than just the students, and the after-
math of the 10th Plenum was a general tightening of
political controls at all levels of the state and society.
Within this general tightening, however, the student--as
a specific target--was to receive particular emphasis.
The Socialist Education Campaign: 1962-1965
The 10th Plenum gave birth to the Socialist Educa-
tion Campaign, a movement that, in Mao's words, was aimed
at "educating man anew and reorganizing our revolutionary
ranks." In application, the Socialist Education Campaign
was an attempt to re-indoctrinate the Chinese people and
reorganize the structures of the state. With such an
ambitious goal, and given the state of disillusionment
and cynicism that afflicted China in 1962, such a campaign
would of necessity be rigorous to the point of cruelty
and many-faceted to reflect the complexity of a state
and society in the middle stages of modernization and in-
dustrialization. Within this campaign, China's youth,
especially the educated youth, were to be a specific
target.
In fact, the Socialist Education Campaign among
youth was a continuation of a program that had come into
existence in the latter half of 1960. By January 1962,
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the press had begun to stress an ideological education
campaign through which China's youth were to recall the
hardships of pre-1949 China and study the "revolutionary
traditidns" of the new. Mao obviously believed that this
campaign was far from successful, but the Socialist Educa-
tion Campaign was to prove equally unsuccessful. In July
1963, China Youth could still report that, when asked to
recall the e!iffering of the old society and not to forget
the source of good in the new society, cynical youth could
yet reply, "There is no source to forget."
Mao himself was equally aware of the basic failure
of the Socialist Education Campaign, and in his July 1964
polemic "On Khrushchev's Phony Communism and its Histori-
cal Lessons for the World," he again raised the question
of "revolutionary successors." This question, Mao wrote,
is "...a matter of life and death for our Party and our
country." Mao set forth five criteria for the selection
of successors, but most significant was that they "come
forward in mass struggles and are tempered in great
storms of revolution." Later events have demonstrated
that Mao had every intention of giving China's students
the opportunity to be tested in mass struggles, but for
the moment he was to settle for a less ambitious program.
The year 1964 was marked by the continuing emphasis
on ideological training, the mobilization of youth to
take part in the "construction of a new socialist country-
side," and a renewed emphasis on the half-work, half-study
approach to education. Within these three basic approaches
to the solution of the problem of revolutionary successors,
however, there appeared definite signs of an attempt to
soften what for Mao were almost certainly seen as the
essentials for revolutionizing education. The basic out-
line of Mao's policies was put forth in a series of con-
current campaigns.
A. "Fewer But Better"
The "Fewer But Better" campaign was introduced in
1961 as part of the program designed to cut away some of
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the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and was applied
broadly to the ad hoc experiments introduced during this
period, but in education this campaign focused on pro-
ducing specific skills necessary for economic development.
This policy was described in the press at the time as
one of "adjustment. consolidation, filling out, and
raising standards." Following the 10th Plenum of August-
September 1962, the slogan of "Fewer But Better" became
more and more involved with questions of ideological
training. By early 1964, the problem of intensifying
the ideological training of youth was being discussed
under Mao's directive ordering the lightening of the
"students' burden and improving the quality of teaching,
so that students can develop their moral, intellectual,
and physical qualities in a brisk and active way." The
key word here is "moral." In July 1964, Kwangming Daily
described "moral education" as consisting "principally
of socialist and communist education, class education,
and labor education." The editorial stated:
In our view, in the socialist new China,
people's teachers not only have the job
of spreading knowledge but, more import-
ant, have the task of fostering the moral
qualities of their students.
In the discussion of the "Fewer But Better" campaign
in the press, it was quite evident that the central issue
was that the heavy academic load was causing the students
to either neglect politics or take a bored and indifferent
attitude toward political training. Thus the "fewer But
Better" approach was to be used in formal political classes
and in political meetings. The intent was that by reduc-
ing the number of hours spent in political classes and
meetings, and by careful preparation, political training
would be more effective.
B. "The Construction of a New Socialist Countryside"
Concurrent with the discussion of ideological and
political training in the schools, the national press
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was discussing the mobilization and organization of young
urban intellectuals to be sent to rural areas to "take
part in the construction of a new socialist countryside.-
A People's Daily editorial on 4 February 1.964 stated:
Several million students graduate annually
from middle and primary schools in the
urban areas. With the exception of a
handful of students who will continue
to study at high-level schools or be
employed in urban areas, the majority
will take part in various socialist
construction tasks in agriculture,
forestry, animal husbandry, sideline
production, and fishery in hilly and
rural areas.
Whereas in 1961 the students had been urged to go to the
countryside on the grounds of commitment to the revolu-
tion and loyalty to Mao, in 1964 it was clearly stated
that such motivations were insufficient. China's youth
were questioning their assignments on the basis that the
state was wasting their talents, and that before the
modernization of agriculture educated men have no place
on the commune. Furthermore, many students were ques-
tioning the purpose of spending years in school only to
end up as farm laborers.
The regime apparently paid serious attention to the
questions raised by the students, and insisted at the time
that before students were sent to a specific rural assign-
ment, careful planning should be undertaken to assure
proper and productive use of their talents. Although the
press commentary stated that one of the purposes of the
rural assignments was to enable youth to learn about "past
evils" from the peasants, ^,onsiderable space was given
to discussing how to make commune life more attractive
to urban intellectuals, Youth League organizations were
instructed to assure that the youths had sufficient read-
ing materials and that they were given time for study,
recreational., and sports activities. To what extent such
preparations were made, and whether or not they reduced
student opposition to their assignments--they probably
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did not--is, for the purposes of this analysis, not as
important as the response of the regime to the problem.
Peking recognized that the basic ideological com-
mitment of the students was not strong enough to motivate
them to the kinds of sacrifices demanded of them. Further-
more, it is quite evident that in the process of implement-
ing one of Mao's strongest beliefs, a realistic appraisal
of the actual response of China's youth overrode the
ideological purposes behind the campaign,
C. Half-Work, Half-Study Schools
The third component of the program to create
"revolutionary successors" was the renewed emphasis on
another Great Leap Forward innovation--the half-work,
half-study schools. In October 1964, Ou Meng-chueh, a
member of the Secretariat of the CCP Kwangtung Provincial
Committee, wrote in the People's Daily:
The adoption of the half-work (farming)
and half-study educational system has
a very far-reaching significance for
the present and future of our country.
Such an educational system is a basic
educational system under socialism and
communism. Following the development
of the socialist enterprise, this system
will gradually develop to become the
principal educational system in our
country.
The half-work, half-study system was a method by which
the students devoted half their time to classes, and the
other half to "productive labor." As the concept was
applied in 1958, the schools were generally "agricultural
middle schools" and primarily created to provide junior
middle school (7th through 9th grade) education for child-
ren who were to become agricultural workers. The schools
were to be established and run by the agricultural coopera-
tives and financially supported by the "productive labor"
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of the students on plots of land set aside, or reclaimed
for their use. As the concept was applied in the urban
areas, the factories organized schools of their own
designed to create technicians in the specialization of
the plant. There was some experimentation with higher
education using the half-work, half-study method, and
these schools were also attached to plants, but usually
to relatively large and advanced factories. Similar
experiments were conducted on rural communes. During
the initial experimentation stage there were to be two
systems of education--half-time and full-time--existing
side by side, existing under the rubric of "walking on
two legs." The thrust of educational reform in the
middle 1960's was to reintroduce this experiment, an
experiment that had been pushed aside in the retrench-
ment period following the Great Leap Forward.
The Kwangming Daily of 6 January 196^ carried a
discussion entitled, "On Experiment With th Part-Work
and Part--Study Educational System." The id-iological
goals of the system were:
To prepare in particular for the elimination
of differences between mental and manual
labor as one of the important conditions for
the realization of the communist system, the
testing and gradual implementation of the
part-work,, and , part-study or part-farming
and part-study educational system...
`.throughout 1964-65 the press was replete with reports
concerning the application of the policy of "walking on
two legs." Typically, such reporting regularly stated
that "experimentation" with half-work, half-study schools
began in 1958, thus indicating a continuation of Mao's
commitment to the Great Leap Forward and his particular
utopia. As the current "educational revolution" draws
from the experience in 1962-1965 and similarly states
that its origin was in 1958, an analysis of the system
as it was described in 1964-1965 will prove useful for
analyzing continuity and change in the current policies.
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Half-Work, Half-Study: A Model County
Articles in the People's Daily and the Nanfang
Daily (Canton) in September 1964 gave a reasonably clear
picture of the system as it was to be applied in a rural
county (hsien). Hsin-hui County in Kwangtung began its
experiment in 1958. By September 1964, it had created
three levels of half-work, half-study education. The
county had 14 commune-run agricultural (forestry) middle
schools, one of which had senior middle school classes,
one intermediate agro-technical middle school, and one
"labor university."
The agricultural middle school recruited from
senior primary school graduates and produced literate
peasants with a basic knowledge of agricultural pro-
duction techniques. Essentially, the agricultural mid-
dle school produced junior middle school graduates with
basic information geared to the needs of a specific
commune. The curriculum of the school focused on
politics, Chinese language, mathematics, abacus train-
ing, rural financial accounting, land surveying, agri-
cultural biology, fertilizer techniques, and general
farming techniques. The future role of the agricultural
middle school graduate would be to assist the peasants
on the commune and generally raise the level of agri-
cultural expertise in the production teams. They were
assigned after three years of half-time study.
The intermediate agro-technical school recruited
from "young intellectuals" (not further defined) and
junior middle school graduates who had "tempered them-
selves through labor in the countryside." The school was
designed to produce senior middle school graduates with
specific skills related to agricultural production in
their particular geographical area. The stated purpose
of the curriculum (not described) was to produce "inter-
mediate and elementary grade technicians needed by the
commune for production teams." It may be safely assumed
that these graduates would become the technical managers
of production teams.
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The "labor university" recruited from "outstanding"
graduates of state-run middle schools, agricultural mid-
dle schools, and intermediate agro-technical schools who
had been recommended by the commune authorities and their
particular production teams. Graduates of the "labor
university" were assigned by the county governments to
become technical managers wherever they were needed in
the county.
The model county described above attempted to
expand education while at the same time structuring its
:ducational system toward selective recruiting into the
several levels. Thus even though there would be greater
educational opportunities, the specific needs of the
county were the overriding criteria for curriculum and
recruiting.
Half-Work, Half-Study: The Industrial Model
The same principle of training specific skills
applicable to a specialized situation or a specific need
was also applied in industry. A Kwangming Daily report
of August 1964 described a half-work, half-study school
attached to the Tientsin Photographic Film Plant. This
experiment, of course, commenced in 1958. The school
appears to have been designed to produce middle-level
technicians capable of communicating easily with
engineers--an attempt to solve a familiar problem that
exists in developing countries. By 1964, according to
the report, over 40 percent of the workers in th9 plant
had graduated from the school run by this factory. It
initially recruited some 300 junior middle school graduates.
The course materials were compiled by engineers at the
plant and "elsewhere." The course ran for three years
and produced essentially specialized senior middle school
graduates.
The students were divided into two groups that
alternately worked in the plant and studied at the school
on a weekly basis. According to the report, the cur-
riculum was divided into politics (11 percent), "cultural
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sabjects" (42 percent), and specialized technological
training related to the factory's products (47 percent).
The Kwangming Daily noted that the plant was aware of
the necessity of "walking on two legs" in that it recog-
nized the need to rely on ordinary full-time schools for
sc.ae of its recruiting needs. Similarly, in a nod to the
ever present slogans, it was noted that the plant's school
fulfilled the "three-in-one" curriculum requirement in
its combination of politics, culture, and technology.
The report also stressed the narrow ("Fewer But Better"),
specialized nature of the curriculum and the economy re-
sulting from running such a program. This particular
half-work, half-study school's operating costs were said
to be only 60 percent of those of a full-time school,
while at the same time the students were contributing to
production. The mix of politics, specialized training,
and economy made this particular school a model for all
other industrial enterprises.
Half-Work, Half-Study: The University Model
The experiment in specialized education included
in its goals the creation of individuals who achieve
university-level skills on a half-work, half-study
basis. The Peking Workers Daily on 16 August 1964 pub-
blished a report on the Shanghai Municipal Spare-Time
University, describing it as a "new type of university"
that came into being in 1960 at the suggestion of the
Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. It recruited from
individuals who had worked in industry, on the average,
for ten years, including "industrial workers, engineers,
technical personnel and business administration cadres."
Its five-year curriculum was designed to bring students
with a junior middle school background up to the level
of a university graduate "in specialized engineering
techniques." At the time of the report the institution
had 4,300 students, including 1,000 in the class of 1964.
The school was structured to provide "specialties in
technology and equipment for building machines, electrical
machines and appliances, radio electronics, organic
synthesis, scientific instruments and meters, textile
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engineering, silicate, chemical fibers, casting, electri-
fication of factories and enterprises, and automation."
The curriculum was evidently designed to bridge
the gap between production experience^.nd basic scienti-
fic and theoretical knowledge. The school was clearly
not designed to create research engineers, but production
engineers capable of solving production line and design
problems. Thus once again the concept of narrow, speci-
alized training designed to meet specific needs was the
operational goal of the school.
Half-Work, Half-Study: Summary
In the three levels of half-work, half-study schools
(the Shanghai institution was actually a cross between
half-work, half-study and spare-time schools) there was
an observable attempt to experiment with a complementary
system of education supporting the full-time educational
system. This application of the policy of "walking on
two legs" was a subversion of Mao's goals for the system,
for he envisioned some form of a half-work, half-study
system as ultimately replacing the full-time system and,
what is more important, as a source of the new Chinese
man. By replacing the formal academic process with a
system designed to integrate the student with the workers
and peasants, Mao hoped to over-ride the predominant
influence of the intelligentsia in the educational system,
and at the same time create the optimum conditions for
avoiding the development of elitist attitudes among the
students. Thus the educational system would produce
"worthy revolutionary successors." As the policy was
actually implemented during this experimental stage, it
is evident that the system was being developed to produce
narrowly trained specialists, at best higher technicians,
who could fill the gap between research oriented univer-
sity graduates and the peasant and industrial worker.
Thus a basic pragmatism over-rode Mao Tse-tung's ideo-
logical goals.
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Political Control of the Full-Time Education System
The pragmatism so evident in applying Mao's three
basic components of a revolutionized education system*
was not so strongly reflected in the normal or full-time
educational system. Political control of the curriculum
and the student's daily life was very much in evidence.
The Chinese leadership attempted to make political con-
trol of the education system absolute, and Party control
of education was designed to be complete in both organiza-
tion and content. From the Politburo down to the village,
there was a specified, functional responsibility for the
Party to perform. Political control was present in both
decision-making and the implementation of policy within
the school itself, which had its own Party branch down
to the junior middle school, or by the responsible Party
faction(s) at the commune, production brigade and pro-
duction team levels. At each level of government there
was a corresponding Party structure functioning as the
alter-ego of the substantive ministries or governmental
structure.
A. Political Control; The University
A university was usually subordinated to the Ministry
of Higher Education, the provincial-level government's
Higher Education Bureau, and its alter-ego--the Culture
and Education Department of the provincial Party committee.
Specialized institutions, such as the Chungking Architectural
Engineering College, were subordinated to both the r'inistry
of Higher Education and the Ministry responsible for the
industry or area supported by the specialized institution.
The Chungking Architectural Engineering College was sub-
ordinated to the Ministry of Construction and Engineering
*That is, 1 ewer but better,'(2)"the construction
of a new socialist countryside;' and (3) half-work, half-
study schools.
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as well as the Ministry of Higher Education. Similarly,
the Huanan Agricultural Institute in Canton was subor-
dinated to the Peking Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Real power in the school, however, was held by the Party
branch. Usually the President or Chancellor of a given
institution was concurrently the 1st Secretary of the
institution's Party committee. In those cases where the
head of the school was not also the head of the Party
branch, students at the school stated unequivocally that
his deputy, who would be the head of the Party branch,
was the de facto head of the school.
Although there were variations in the specific
political structure of the institutions, it is possible
to create a model that contains the essential organiza-
tional form.
Overseeing the affairs of the University would be
the Party Committee, headed by the 1st Secretary who
would also be the Chancellor. Each academic department
of the school would have a Party branch, frequently
known as the Educational Research Committee (LRC). As
the heads of the departments were usually academics and
not Party members, the ERC chiefs were the deputy depart-
ment heads. The educational methods, policies, and cur-
riculum were determined by the ERC in close conjunction
with the institution's Party committee. Once a decision
was made, the department head--usually an expert in his
field--was informed, and he and his staff were expected
to implement this policy.
At the student level, political work was conducted
by the Party branch through regular political meetings,
the Communist Youth League, and the Student Association.
Refugee reporting indicated that as many as 90 percent
of the student body of a given institution may have been
members of the CYL. The existence of such a high per-
centage can be best explained by the selection process
of students for higher education where a major criterion
was political reliability. Being a student activist in
middle school would establish the bona fides of a given
individual, and would be especially useful when his
academic qualifications were middling.
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The CYL itself was structured along functional
lines, and contained committees such as the Organization
Committee and the Student Work Committee, but its general
function was to assist in the political indoctrination
of the students and to serve as a watchdog over their
political behavior. Each class and university department
had its own CYL branch, and many of the CYL activities
were carried on from, and within, the classroom.
The specific arrangements for extra-curricular
political meetings varied from institution to institu-
tion, but the basic format was to have one mass meeting
a week presided over by the 1st Secretary of the Party
committee or his representative. The topic for dis-
cussion was selected from the People's Daily, Red Flag,
or some other national publication. The presiding CCP
member would lecture for an hour or so, after which there
would be some discussion, Following the general meeting,
the students would break up into small groups, led by a
CYL member, and would conduct further discussion of the
topic(s) for the day. Apart from these general meetings
and the resultant small group discussions, the CYL would
conduct one or two meetings a week on a departmental and
class level in which the students would discuss their
"daily life." Small group discussions of "daily life and
studies" were is fact self-criticism sessions in which
the individual student would confess his errors. Such
errors were usually related to his attitudes toward his
personal goals and his attitude toward the society and
the Party.
Apart from criticizing his own errors in motivation
and behavior, and outlining his plans for correcting
these errors, the student was also expected to criticize
the shortcomings of his comrades. Frequently these cri-
ticisms had to be put in writing and submitted to the
group leader.
It is difficult to estimate the number of hours
an individual wpuld be involved in extra-curricular
political activities. If, however, the weekly mass as-
semblies and small group or section meetings are included,
the range would be from eight to twenty hours per week.
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In addition, formal political classes took from four to
eight hours a week, giving a total time of 12 to 28 hours
per week. If one further includes the requisite manual
labor as "political training," the total reaches 16 to
32 hours per week. By way of comparison, the average
American student's class load is 12 to 15 hours per week.
This intensive political training and indoctrina-
tion was in addition to the student's heavy academic
schedule. Classes in Chinese institutions of higher
learning run from 40 to 45 minutes per hour, and are held
six days a week. Weekly class hours in the 1963-1965
period ranged from 20 to 36 hours, excluding formal poli-
tical training. The greatest number of class hours were
being taken by medical students, the lowest by fine arts
students. Accurate aggregate data are difficult to
present for the curricula reported were not uniform.
Summary
dent in the mid-1960's was following a rigorous, if not
exhausting, regimen that began at 6:30 a.m. and concluded
at about 9:00 p.m. The student knew that there were two
basic ladders of success in Communist China--he either
developed skills that were essential to the regime, or
he became known as a political activist and worked his
way primarily up the ladder set by the CYL and the Party.
Climbing up either ladder usually required some knowledge
and sophistication about the other, with the most pressure
being applied and felt by the academic, rather than poli-
tical student;, who recognized the Party's "Red and Expert"
goals.
The academically inclined student soon recognized
the basic "rules of the gamd''and attempted to formally
accept the heavy political program, while at the same
time he personally perceived it as a boring waste of time.
During periods of specific political campaigns he knew
what was expected of him and participated with an outward
fervor. The politically oriented student used the political
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campaigns to put another feather in his cap; he used them
to convince his superior that he was indeed the political
activist that he appeared to be in more relaxed times.
No matter what the motivation of a given student was, how-
ever, they all recognized that power in their institutions
was held by the Party and most tried to adjust to this fact
of life.
B. Political Control: The Middle School
Prior to the cultural revolution, there were three
kinds of full-time state supported middle schools in China:
junior middle school, senior middle school, and combina-
tion junior-senior middle school. A junior middle school
taught only the first three grades of the total six-year
middle school course; a senior middle school taught the
final three years; a combination junior-senior middle
school (usually referred to as a senior middle school)
taught all six years in one program. In a rural county
there were usually several junior middle schools, a couple
of senior middle schools, and one combination junior-
senior middle school located at the county seat. This
latter school would be the most prestigious and the most
difficult to enter. In urban areas the same situation
probably existed, with one senior or combination middle
school recruiting from the several junior middle schools.
Political control of the middle school system fol-
lowed the same basic pattern as that devised for higher
education, but there were variations designed to recognize
the unique role of the middle school. The middle school
was at one and the same time the base of recruits for
higher education, the source of social, economic, and
political leaders at the county-municipality level, and
a director of the primary school system. Dual control
of education at this level was in the hands of the Propa-
ganda and Education Department of the county-level CCP
Committee, and the Culture and Education Bureau of the
county-level government. As in all areas of dual control,
the Party held the upper hand. In a rural county there
were usually two educational branches of the Propaganda
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and Education Department. One committee was composed
entirely of teachers from the county senior middle schools,
and, probably, the principals of the junior middle schools
in the county. The other committee was composed of the
principals of the commune level primary schools.
The senior middle school would form its own Party
branch, with the 1st Secretary of the Committee function-
ing as the school principal. Each section or academic
department of the school would be run by a member of the
Party committee; one section or department would be the
Political Department, and was responsible for the poli-
tical education of both the teachers and the students.
Political activities among the students were in part a
function of the Communist Youth League and the Young
Pioneers. Pioneers were recruited from the younger stu-
dents, and the Youth League from students and teachers
aged 16 to 25. Following the standard hierarchical
pattern, the school Party committee would control the
Youth League through its Youth League Committee, and the
Youth League would control the Pioneers through its Young
Pioneers Committee. The Youth League and the Pioneers
were organized on a class basis, and ra;i their political
activities from the classroom.
Junior middle school faculties may not have had
enough CCP members to form a Party branch, but the
principal of the school would be a CCP member, and the
school would have a Political Department or Section re-
sponsible for the political education of the students and
teachers. Junior middle schools probably came under dual
Party supervision, for the middle school section of the
Propaganda and Education Department and the Party branch
of the local combination senior middle school both appear
to have exercised some responsibility for them.
Urban middle schools in all likelihood followed
the same pattern of political control, but it is also
likely that urban junior middle school faculties had a
sufficient number of Party members to form their own Party
branches. These Party branches, along with those of the
senior middle schools, came under the direct supervision
of the municipal Party committee's Propaganda and Educa-
tion Department.
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Middle school curricula normally contained three
or four 45-minute periods of formal political education
per week out of a total of 24 to 26 periods. Manual
labor, another form of political training in the eyes
of the regime, normally absorbed another four periods
a week. Thus seven to eight periods per week, more
than 25 percent of the total class time, were spent'in
scheduled political training.
Political meetings for the students were arranged
by the Party branch and the Youth League, and took place
approximately three times a week. The first meeting took
place early in the week and was presided over by the
Principal/1st Secretary who discussed the political
purpose of being a student. Later that week, the teachers
presided over classroom discussion of the "central assign-
ment," which consisted of the specific political topic
designated for that week. Finally, the class committees,
led by the Youth League class committee chairman would
lead a discussion of the earlier meeting. As the political
discussion moved down to smaller and smaller groups there
occurred the concomitant closer supervision. Similarly,
"political" discussions of "central" topics concerned
not only the substance of the topics, but also confessions
of one's own errors in motivation and behavior. As in
the university, criticism and exposure of the errors of
fellow students was also a stringent requirement of the
process.
Summary
The primary goal for students in middle school
was to achieve a place in a university or other insti-
tution of higher education. Middle school students
recognized, especially when they were in senior middle
school, the two ladders of success. They knew full well
that a combination of academic success and acceptable
political "reliability" was pecessary to gain a seat.
Similarly, an activist and student leader with a good
record in the Youth League could also achieve a place
in a university. Recommendation from the school,
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essentially the Party, was as necessary for entering the
university as an acceptable academic record. Ideally a
combination of both virtues was required, but in applica-
tion one or the other was sufficient, with the proviso
that academic qualifications could be neutralized by a
record of political unreliability or "backwardness." In
fact, the individual who chose the academic ladder set
as his minimum political goal avoiding the reprobation
of "politically backward" from his political overseers.
There were periods of time when academic studies
were emphasized more than political activism. The cycles
of emphasis, however, did not completely negate the neces-
sity to appear politically active. Furthermore, the alert
student, especially in senior middle school, recognized
the cyclical pattern of emphases and strove to maintain
a balance in his behavior at all times.
C. Political Control: The Primary School
Full-time state-run primary schools were divided
into three categories according to the extent to which
they taught the full six-year primary school course.
Thus junior primary school taught the first four years,
senior primary school taught the final two years, and
some schools were combined junior-senior primary schools
teaching the entire six years.
The pattern of political control was basically the
same as for middle schools, but the administrative unit
to which they were attached was one or two steps below
the county level. All full-time primary schools were
financed by the county, but administered by the commune-
level Education an. Culture Bureau. Political control
at this level was exerted by the commune's Party Propa-
ganda committeeman. In a rural county, each commune
would have several senior primary schools. Below the
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commune, each production brigade would have at least
one junior primary school. The number of production
brigades in a commune varies considerably, but in south-
ern China 10-15 is not an unusual number. Political
control at the brigade level was structurally different-
iated, but in fact the merger of Party and government
cadres was often total; therefore, the distinction between
government and Party responsibility was usually rendered
meaningless. Party responsibility, however, rested with
the Education and Culture committeeman.
As with middle and higher education, the principal
of the primary school would ideally be a Party member,
but at the very least he or she would be a political
activist appointed on the basis of political criteria.
It is probable that the senior primary school principals
whose schools were the central primary school for the
school district (usually the commune) were Party members.
These principals met once a month at the county seat for
their Party branch meeting. There were three other
weekly meetings held at the commune level, where they
would meet with Party officials from the commune Party
branch to coordinate their activities with the other com-
mune programs.
There was little formal political education at the
primary school level, and no student organizations beyond
the Young Pioneers. Reporting on curriculum content and
the role of political education varies. Some of the elite
senior primary schools and combination primary schools
attended by the children of Party cadres seemingly did
have three to four periods of formal political education
per week, but for the most part there was no formal poli-
tical education. It should be understood, however, that
the content of primers, grammar texts, and even arithmetic
texts contained an extremely high level of political in-
formation. Similarly, the games organized by the Young
Pioneers would have political themes central to the purpose
of the game.
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Entrance Requirements and Fees
For a natio.. that has set modern agriculture, modern
industry, and a modern defense system among its highest
goal priorities, entering the educational system was made
excessively difficult. Some of the problems, of course,
could not be avoided. There was a serious shortage of
teachers at the primary and middle school level, and it
was costly, in terms of one view of national development,
to use trained graduates of higher education institutes
for the purpose of teaching. Certainly a number of gradu-
ates were used as teachers in universities and colleges,
but the shortage of college and lower-level teachers is
clear from the data. Essentially, the shortage of teach-
ers and facilities at all levels of Chinese education
meant that the number of candidates far exceeded the num-
ber of seats available. In one sense, the Chinese reduced
the pressure on full-time and part-time study schools by
maintaining political criteria for entrance, and by
charging basic fees at all levels of the system. These
criteria and fees, however, tended to reduce, rather than
improve, the quality of students that the system produced.
The two most significant impediments to entering
were the political criteria and
the competition for seats. Close to these hurdles in
significance was the financial cost of starting and con-
tinuing one's education. The financial pressure is most
noticeable at the primary school level in the rural areas.
It appears that primary school education was not required
by the state, and that many children did not receive even
a junior primary school education. There were, l-owever,
no political requirements for entering primary school
--only children who were mentally or physically handi-
capped were barred from the lowest levels of the system.
Entering middle schools, however, especially the
major middle schools, was a different matter. Political
criteria were, apparently, as forcefully applied as aca-
demic excellence. Priority was given to the sons and
daughters of "poor and lower-middle peasants" and the
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 children of the "working class." It is also quite
evident that the children of Party and government cadres
received special attention. Thus competition for seats
that would normally skim off the cre-m of the youth re-
sulted, probably, in excluding many children from homes
which had the intellectual atmosphere and basic family
training that contributes to a successful academic career.
Undoubtedly, many children who did not come from the
favored class backgrounds entered ;piddle school, but
there is enough reporting to indicate that class back-
ground was an enforced criterion, albeit somewhat un-
evenly enforced. The children of cadres were favored in
yet another way, in that elite combined primary and
middle schools were created that recruited primarily from
kindergartens run for the children of Party and govern-
ment cadres. These schools had a ten-year curriculum,
instead of the usual twelve, and gave superior instruction
to this elite group.
If a student was successful in clearing the poli-
tical, intellectual, and financial hurdles from primary
school through senior middle school, he or she attempted
to enter a university or its equivalent. The political,
intellectual, and financial problems were complicated
at this stage by the necessity of choosing an institution
and area of academic concentration. Every middle sc'eool
student hoped desperately to be admitted into an insti-
tution of higher education, but he was equally aware
that the number of candidates for the prestigious schools
in Peking, Shanghai, Canton and elsewhere would be exces-
sive. Thus many students would select smaller, lesser
known local schools in order to increase the probability
of being selected for higher education. Similarly, a
student would have to choose his area of examination care-
fully. He knew that some fields, such as languages and
the hard sciences, were of greater significance to the
nation than others. Many students would thus choose to
be examined in fields where there was a greater demand.
The Ministry of Higher Education which set the national
examinations and ultimately decided which school and what
field a student should enter could override the choice
of an individual, but the student knew that his choice
of schools and fields would greatly affect his assignment.
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Choice, politics, academic excellence, and financial costs
were intertwined in a tight and, for the student, desper-
ate combination of factors.
The financial cost of education was in part alleviated
by the possibility of receiving state subsidies. It ap-
pears that at least some assistance was available at all
levels of the system, even for primary school education,
Yet the refugee reporting clearly indicates that govern-
ment subsidies were difficult to obtain, with the exception
of schools related to industry and science. The Peking
Iron and Steel Institute, the Peking Petroleum Institute,
and the Hua Chung Polytechnic Institute all subsidized
students, the latter even reportedly supplying pocket
money to students receiving full subsidies. Students at-
tending agricultural middle schools could finance their
education through working on the commune, and the richer
production brigades apparently supported any student whose
family could not afford to send him to primary school.
Job Assignments
Youth growing up in China are completely aware (the
adjective "desperate" springs to mind again) of the abso-
lute necessity of achieving at least a middle school edu-
cation if they are to avoid the endless toil of a farm
or industrial laborer. Even those who achieve a middle
school education are subject to being sent out to the
countryside. The better middle schools often sent their
graduates to the rural areas to assume a "higher position"
as a state cadre or statistician; others were undoubtedly 25X1
assigned middle level technical and mane erial ositions
in industry.
the threat of lifelong physical labor was constantly 25X1
in the minds of middle school graduates, expecially those
who failed to enter senior middle school.
Graduates of universities had a better chance of
receiving assignments commensurate with their skills,
especially if their skills were deemed to be of critical
national importance. But, for many students, there was
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a basic fear that their skills would be used in remote
rural or virgin areas. Furthermore, in the post-Great
Leap Forward period, even as late as 1964, there was
the impression that prior to receiving their assignment,
they would be required to perform a year's manual labor.
The problem that arose after the Great Leap Forward was
simply that there were not enough openings in industry
and agriculture to absorb the number of graduates with
skills applicable to modernized agriculture and industry.
In the narrow vocational sense that prompted the develop-
ment of the half-work, half-study schools, there was a
need for middle and lower level technicians and managers,
but for many of the graduates with higher levels of edu-
cation there were not enough suitable positions. China,
in common with many other developing nations, was produc-
ing more trained personnel than the level of development
could utilize. This left a significant gap between the
level of expectation generated by the educational system
and the level of skill application the nation and society
could use. For the students, especially in the aftermath
of the Great Leap Forward, this was a very depressing
discovery.
Student Morale and Political Attitudes
The political attitude of students in the middle
corre ates with t e
studies made by Alexander L. George of the People's Lib-'
eration Army, and to some extent with the findings of
Robert J. Lifton. Students and teachers at both the mid-
dle school and university level were characteristically
demonstrating clear indications of dissimulation, and,
in the area of politics at least, the atomization of
group relationships. It was common pra,tice to control
one's behavior and simulate correct attitudes. The pro-
cesses of political socialization, especially small-group
criticism, led to a level of anxiety and fear about one's
own political beliefs. Dissimulation led to an unwill-
ingness to discuss politics outside formal classes and
"daily life" self-criticism sessions. Unwillingness to
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discuss politics and the obvious anxiety about one's
own motivation and behavior led to the atomization of
group relationships and deprived the students of even
the possibility of creating organized resistance to
their overseers. Thus there was a definite behavior
pattern evident in which self-preservation was the com-
mon reference.
The ability of the regime to force dissimulative
behavior upon the students is quite obviously a function
of the students' awareness that their future depended to
a large extent upon an acceptable political as well as
academic performance in school. Student observations
that the political sess &'.ons were boring and irrelevant
were accurate descriptions of their response to them,
but their personal goals overrode any predisposition
they may have had to resist.
The political authorities in the schools were
undoubtedly aware that dissimulation was the character-
istic student response to the process of politicization,
but at the very least this response achieved the minimum
threshold demanded by the system: the mobilization and
control of student behavior. The more ambitious goal
of changing the basic attitudes of the student to the
extent that they internalized the values being thrust
upon them was probably rarely achieved. Furthermore,
in all likelihood this higher threshold was not even
sought, except by the most ambitious or convinced poli-
tical cadre. Certainly the core values of loyalty to
the state and to some extent the Party were learned
and internalized long before the student reached the
university, but the more extreme values of the cult of
Mao were probably only rarely internalized.
Dissimulation was a function of self-protection
and of self-seeking individuals. There was a high level
of resentment, not so much of individuals but of a system
that forced students to "waste" so much of their "valu-
able" time in irrelevant political studies, humiliating
and dangerous self-criticism sessions, and arduous physical
labor.
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The Prelude to the Cultural Revolution:
Conclusions
The educational system in 1964-1965 was in the
process of becoming a dual system of half-work, half-
study and full-time education. Although the half-work,
half-study system was still in an experimental stage, as
it was being developed it would have become a vocational
training oriented system complementing the full-time
system. There were to be, in fact, two educational sys-
tems. Mao's view of the new educational system was not
based upon the economic and general developmental problems
of China, but rather upon an ideological base in which
the creation of "revolutionary successors" was the pre-
eminent value. Mao's goals were essentially political,
but the implementation of his policies was pragmatic in
that an obvious attempt was made to respond to some of
China's developmental realities as well as Mao's own
views.
The charges made against Liu Shao-chi during the
course of the cultural revolution demonstrate Mao's aware-
ness of the manner in which his policies were being im-
plemented. Liu is charged with subverting Mao's educa-
tional policies from as early as 1949; and having continued
his opposition until he was purged in August, 1966. The
state of the educational system in 1964-1965 indicates
quite clearly that Mao's perception that his political
considerations were being subverted by a pragmatic im-
plementation of his policies was essentially correct.
Liu Shao-chi and his cohorts have been charged with the
emasculation of Mao's policies in the following ways:
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a) Basing the half-work, half-study system upon
economic consideratibns--essentially that this was a cheap
way of expanding education.
h) Violating the political principles upon which
the system was based by stressing the educational-voca-
tional values of the system.
c) Intending to create a dual system of educa-
tion rather than ultimately planning for a conversion
of the entire system to half-work, half-study.
d) Using the dual system to produce "aristocrats"
from the full-time system and managerial and technical
staff from the half-work, half-study system. This parti-
cular charge is often stated by indicting Liu for pro-
Oucing "bourgeois revisionists and intellectuals" from
the half-work, half-study system.
e) Deliberately sJ.Owing down the development of
the half-work, half-study system by invoking a policy
of gradualism and experimentation.
In the full-time system Liu and his supporters are charged
with subverting Mao's policies in curriculum reform, par-
ticularly with using the "fewer but better" watchword to
reduce, rather than intensify, political training.
It is evident that since 1960-61 there has been
a consistent, pragmatic strain running through the im-
plementation of Mao's policies toward educational reform.
Furthermore, there is evidence that Mao was aware at the
time that his particular goals and conceptualizations
were not shared b, all of the Party's leadership. Mao's
references to tMe absolute necessity of creating true
"revolutionary successors" were too much in evidence for 25X1
any politically alert individual to have missed their
import. Indeed, Mao addressed his views
in September 1964, and twice 25X1
7referred to Peking Na-
tional University as "not a goo university and indicated
that the products of China's universities were not reliable
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material for revolutionary successors. The visitors at-
tempted to reassure Mao by referring to the loyalty and
political fervor expressed by the students in their con-
versatioas with them, but Mao expressed frank skepticism
over the depth and conviction of the views expressed by 25X1
Mao had good reason to doubt that the stu- 25X1
dents and teachers had achieved the level of fanaticism
his goals call for.
By early 1966 Mao had evidently decided that yet
another "revolution" had to occur, not only in education
but in the society as a whole, The entire society was
to be subjected to a new revolutionary spasm as Mao
sought to achieve his goals, and in the process his op-
ponents were to be purged. This new spasm was called
the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."
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THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
The Closing of the Schools
The educational system was following its normal
processes in the early months of 1966. The Kwangtung
press in January was announcing preparation for post-
graduate enrollment, and listing the universities where
examinations for graduate schools across the country
would be administered. On 16 January NCNA broadcast an
article lauding the accomplishments of students who had
completed their studies in the previous three years,
taking note of their assignments to various universi-
ties, research institutions and industries.
Soon after NCNA's laudatory broadcast, however,
a discordant note began to appear in the press. On 20
January, the People's Daily published an article prais-
ing the ingenuity of the Chinese worker and decrying
those who complained that China had too few scientists.
The article proceeded to discuss a model scientist,
who had come from the ranks of the workers and had only
completed primary school prior to embarking on his
scientific career. Similarly, on 24 January, People's
Daily reported on the significance of Mao Tse-tung 's
thought in guiding scientific research, citing sixteen
scientific and technical achievements directly attribu-
table to the correct application of Mao's thought.
These initial commentaries were but harbingers of the
immediate future.
On 11 April, People's Daily published a report
on a symposium held in Shantung of "leading cadres of
institutions of higher education directly under the
Ministry of Higher Education." A major part of the
discussion centered on the significance of politics in
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institutions of higher learning and reflected the general
tenor of the provincial and national press since the end
of January. The conference observed that:
...schools of higher learning served as points
of concentration for intellectuals, a great
number of them got a bourgeois education in the
old society while as many made constant contacts
with the cultural legacy of feudalism and
capitalism. As a result, they were constantly
influenced by bourgeois ideology.
The symposium concluded that:
In spite of numerous ideological reform move-
ments which had been conducted among higher
schools in our country and despite some measure
of progress made by intellectuals, as far as
the majority of the people were concerned, the
problem of establishing the proletarian communist
world outlook remained basically unsolved.
In order to solve this problem, and especially because
these centers educated China's youth, the educators them-
selves should be re-educated. If this were not done,
the symposium averred, the centers of higher learning
would produce revisionists. It was decided, therefore,
that a movement for studying Mao's works should be turned
into "a mass rectification campaign on the higher education
front." Thus, within three months, higher education's
status had shifted from that of a system producing properly
politicized graduates to that of a center of bourgeois
intellectualism breeding revisionism. In effect, the
attack of the educational system had begun.
On 13 June 1966, the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party and the State Council directed that the
enrollment of students into institutes of higher educa-
tion be postponed, and that the system of entrance exam-
inations be completely revised. According to a front
page editorial of the People's Daily of 18 June, the
purpose of the directive was to ensure the thorough
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and successful carrying through of the cultural revolution
and to effect a thorough reform of the educational system."
This directive, and the processes of the cultural revolu-
tion, effectively closed down the entire educational system
until the summer of 1968, and ended all meaningful education
in China for at least three academic years.
The Red Guard Reign of Terror*
The closing of the schools on 13 June freed millions
of students across the nation to participate in Mao's cul-
tural revolution. The first Red Guard recruits, generally
in their late 'teens and early twenties, were handpicked
by local Cultural Revolution Groups at certain schools in
the late spring and early summer. These handpicked groups
were to become the core of Red Guard organizations when
their ranks were expanded in August and September of 1966.
Peking's campuses became the training group for Red
Guards in the spring and early summer when certain future
Red Guards were sent to Peking for classes in "cultural
revolution tactics." Ultimately, the Red Guards were to
receive directions which permitteu them to by-pass the
Party apparatus and assault the existing political struc-
ture. On 18 August, the Red Guards were publicly consecrated
as the shock troops of the culttral revolution at a mass
rally in Tienanmen square in Peking. Mao reviewed his
troops, and in Piao and Chou En-lai spoke to them, launch-
ing them on their violent course.
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The educational system with its centers of "bour-
geois intellectualism" was among the first of the Red
Guard targets. Their instructions from Lin Piao, speaking
on the behalf of Mao, called for a "general offensive"
against "bourgeois ideas and all other exploiting classes:"
The great proletarian cultural revolution is
aimed precisely at eliminating bourgeois
ideology, remolding people's souls, revo-
lutionizing their ideology, digging out the
roots of revisionism, and consolidating and
developing the socialist system.
The targets for the assault-.-"those in authority
who are taking the capitalist road, reactionary bourgeois
authorities, bourgeois royalists, ghosts and monsters"--
designated by Lin were both broad enough and narrow r-^ough,
given Mao's statements about revisionism in the ed,ca=..Lonal
system, to permit an extensive attack on the faculties and
political authorities in the schools at all levels of the
system.
All of China's universities were to suffer complete
disruption, and some of China's most prestigious educators
were to be removed from office or commit suicide, as a
result of the Red Guard onslau ht-Q.
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IIn Peking when the body of a professor was
found, "authorities" herded the students onto trucks and 25X1
had them driven to the location of the body. The students
then stoned the corpse. 'A member of Canton's pres-
tigious Medical College jumped from the fifth floor of
the school's administration building. In Futan University,
Shanghai, one of China's most renowned institutions, all
of the Western trained or "oriented" members of the faculty
were subjected to continuous pressure. They were "dragged
out" by the students and subjected to intensive and brutal
questioning. Futan is a center of science and engineering,
and therefore contained a large number of faculty who
could easily be identified as having a Western orientation
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From across China in the summer of 1966 came reports of
purges and suicides. Among the dismissals were the
Presidents or Chancellors of Peking National University
(Peita), Tsinghua University, Wuhan University and
other major academic centers.
The teachers at middle schools were also sub-
jected to Red Guard terrorism. As in the universities,
teachers were required to attend "struggle sessions"
in which they had to defend themselves against charges
made by Red Guards. It was common for the accusers to
use force in order to extract the proper answers. The
intensity of the pressures upon the accused teachers can
be seen in the letters written by participants in the
campaign. Followin the pattern used in "daily life"
sessions, the initial accusations were made in small
group meetings. Frequently, the individuals o ini-
tiated the attacks were friends, relatives, students,
or even spouses of the accused. The logic behind
these attacks was simple; knowing that he or she would
be identifiable as closely connected with the accused,
a personal friend would lead the attack in order to de-
fend himself. Not to do so would immediately focus
attention on the failure, and the personal relationship
would become sufficient cause for a "struggle session."'.'
Even though those under attack recognized the reason
for this behavior, and indeed were sympathetic to it,
they found the questioning, beating, and spitting by
close friends and relatives the most traumatic of all
of the indignities they had to suffer.
At both the university and middle school level
the initial response of the students to the demand
from their leaders they attack the faculty and admini-
stration was one of reluctance. Initially they feared
revenge in the form of bad marks or poor recommendations.
The Red Guard core group or local Cultural Revolution
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Group explained to them, however, that to advance to
the next rung on the academic ladder required a com-
bination of recommendation and selection. The political
criteria for selection, it was made clear to the stu-
dents, would be measured by their performance in the
cultural revolution. Apart from this motivation,
there is considerable evidence that many students used
the campaign against the faculty and staff as an op-
portunity to revenge themselves for past poor grades
or other experiences.
Red Guard rampages were to continue with few
quiescent periods for the following two years. Attempts
were made to return the students to the campuses and
classrooms in the spring, summer, and fall of 1967, but
at no time was ary return to meaningful education in-
tended. The attempts to return the students to their
classrooms in 1967 were essentially designed to bring
the students under control. The most successful ef-
fort was made in the fall of 1967, and by November a
substantial number of Red Guards had returned at least
to their own localities. However, not only were many of
the students unwilling to give up their intoxicating
independence and political power, but teachers were
fearful of the students who had only recently been
empowered to terrorize them. Students who did return
to school were instructed to "conduct revolution in
the classrooms", which led to more struggle sessions
with teachers. The ability of the students to terrorize
the teachers this time, however, was restricted by the
presence of PLA soldiers in the classrooms.
The authority of the PLA in the educational sys-
tem was established by Mao Tse-tung's letter to Lin Piao,
Chou En-lai, and the central Cultural Revolution Group
of 7 March,1967, in which he wrote:
..The army should give military and political
training in the universities, middle schools and
higher classes of primary schools, stage by stage
and group by group...
Nevertheless, in many cases the return to the classrooms
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merely turned the campuses and schools into battle-
grounds as rival Red Guard: factions fought, literally,
for political dominance. To all intents and purposes,.
Red Guard terror continued into July 1968 when Mao was
finally convinced that he would have to sacrifice his
Red Guards and replace them with a more responsive and
reliable extra-legal political force: the Worker-
Peasant Mao Tse-tung's Thought Propaganda Teams.
The Reinstatement of Authority
A series of central directives designed to stop
the fighting generated by conflicting Red Guard groups
led, finally, to the use of force by the Army. By the
middle of July, authorities in several provinces were
using the PLA to forcefully suppress the Red Guards
and Revolutionary Rebels. The new attitude toward the
Red Guards was also reflected in press reporting.
Throughout July and August there was considerable
emphasis placed on a quote from Mao's 1939 article
commemorating the 20th anniversary of the May 4th
Movement:
How should we judge whether or not a youth is
revolutionary? How can we tell? There can be
only one criterion, namely, whether or not he
is willing to integrate himself with the broad
masses of workers and peasants and does so in
practice. If he is willing to do so and act-
ually does so, he is a revolutionary; other-
wise he is non-revolutionary and counterrevolu-
tionary.
On 27 July the first Worker-Peasant Thought of
Mao Tse-tung Propaganda Team (henceforth propaganda team)
arrived on the campus of Tsinghua University accompanied
by soldiers of the PLA. On 5 August Mao presented this
propaganda team with a gift of mangoes that Mao had
personally received as a gift from Pakistan. This gift
was described as a "token of the greatest faith in, and
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attention, support, and encouragement to the revolu-
tionary masses from Chairman Mao." If there was any
doubt as to the future role of the propaganda teams
and their PLA supporters it should have been dispelled
by Mao's "instructions" broadcast on 25 August:
In carrying out the proletarian revolution in
education it is essential to have working class
leadership; it is essential for the masses of the
workers to take part and in cooperation with the
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 educa-
tion through to the end. The workers propa-
ganda teams should stay ermanentl in the
schools (emphasis added) and take part in
fulfilling all the tasks in the schools of
struggle-criticism-transformation, and they will
always lead the schools. In the countryside,
the schools should be managed by the poor and
lower middle peasants -- the most reliable
ally of the working classes.
By the end of August, or the middle of September at the
latest, every major university in the country was under
the sway of propaganda teams and their PLA allies.
Propaganda teams were not restricted to the schools and
universities; they were empowered to enter "all leading
organs at all levels, literary and art organizations,
scientific and research units, publishing houses, hos-
pitals" etc. Mao's intention was, and is, to take the
new phase of the cultural revolution into all formal
structures of the society.
A. The Worker-Peasant Propaganda Teams
Yao Wen-yuan, a member of the central Cultural
Revolution Group and an authoritative source of Mao
Tse-tung's intentions, published an article in the
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Party journal Red Flag that was subsequently reproduced
in the Peking Review (#35), 30 August 1968, describing
the role of the propaganda teams. Entitled "The Work-
i,ig Class Must Exercise Leadership in Everything", the
article laid down the basic form of reform in a factory,
but which in fact also described the process as it was
to take place in the educational system.
The ;struggle-criticism-transformation in a
factory, on the whole, goes through the fol-
lowing stages: establishing a revolutionary
committee based on the "three-in-one" combin-
ation, mass criticism and repudiation, puri-
fying class ranks, rectifying the party organ-
ization, simplifying organizational structure,
changing irrational rules and regulations and
sending people who work in offices to grass-
roots level.
Referring specifically to the educational system, Yao
wrote:
Worker propaganda teams should systematically
and in a planned way go to universities, mid-
dle schools and primary schools, to all areas
of the superstructure and Nl1 units in which
the struggle-criticism-transformation has not
been carried out well.
In the educational system, the working class was given
the mission of "remolding" the intellectuals in order
to eliminate the "traditional influence" of the bourgeo-
isie in "cultural and educational units." Thus the
propaganda teams were given the authority to oversee
the thought reform of the intellectuals, including stu-
dents, and the reformation of the educational system.
The status of the Red Guards and their future
role was made undeniably clear by Madame Mao on 7 Sep-
tember in her speech at a rally celebrating the success-
ful formation of revolutionary committees at the pro-
vincial level throughout China. Her address was clearly
sympathetic to the Red Guards and reflected her concern
over the treatment they were to receive at the hands of
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the PLA and the propaganda teams:
We must not forget that the revolutionary
youth have made tremendous contributions
at the initial and middle stages of the revolu-
tion.
Chiang Ching continued, saying that "a small number" of
Red Guards had made mistakes, but that "We have the duty
to help them correct these mistakes." Finally she asks
the Red Guards to accept the leadership of the working
class as commanded by Mao on 27 July.
The propaganda teams that entered the educational
system in the summer of 1968 were organized by the ap-
propriate revolutionary committee. In the urban areas
factories formed the propaganda teams, or formed com-
ponents of the larger teams. In the rural areas pea-
sants were selected from the communes and production
brigades to form teams. In addition, many of the teams
had PLA-men as members of the team or attaches to the
team.
Once on the campus, the team(s) restored order
by forcing the Red Guards to form alliances. Having
achieved a semblance of order, the team completed
the final purge of the faculty, administration, Party
structure, and Red Guard organizations if the muni-
cipal or provincial revolutionary committee deemed
further purge necessary, which it often did. In
the process of restoring order in Canton's C''ving-
shan Medical College, for example, the propaganda team
organized the "dragging out" of the former President
and First Secretary of the college's Party Committee.
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The disgrace of Chungshan's President Ko Lin occurred
on 24 August, with 11,000 persons reportedly attending
his "struggle session."
The new authority structure built by the propa-
ganda teams and their PLA allies was the "Revolutionary
Committee." The revolutionary committee is a product
of the cultural revolution and is designed to take the
place of the apparatus shattered by the purge. Within
the educational system, each unit (primary school,
middle school, college, university, research center
etc.) will have its own revolutionary committee. The
three-in-one combination of the forces that structure
the revolutionary committee in schools is generally
interpreted to provide for a revolutionary committee
composed of workers or peasants, "revolutionary"
teachers and students, and "revolutionary" cadres--
primarily Party cadres. The essence of the design
is to integrate the principal functional components
of the pre-cultural revolution organization into one
structure. The purpose of the design is to permit
maximum possible control over the functions of the
structure.
It is evident that the building of revolutionary
committees in the universities is a very difficult pro-
cess. Tsinghua University in Peking announced the for-
mation of its revolutionary committee fully six months
after the propaganda team entered on 27 July 1968. The
fact that the propaganda team which entered Tsinghua
was a model team operating under personal mantle
of Chairman Mao, and that it took six months for even
this team to form a revolutionary committee, is indi-
cative of the intensity of the conflict engendered on
the campus by the cultural revolution. The establish-
ment of revolutionary committees at the secondary and
primary school level was not as difficult as their
creation at the university level, but undoubtedly pro-
blems existed.
The formation of revolutionary committees, however,
was only one technique used by the regime to re-establish
its control in the educational.-system. The second
aspect of control introduced a more traditional aspect
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of Mao Tse-tung's political style: the reintroduction
of the campaign to "build a new socialist countryside'."
This involved, as in the past. transferring millions of
students to the communes, state farms, and PLA farms
and land reclamation projects. This campaign was, and
is, combined with the process of administering job as-
signments for middle school and university students who
"graduated" in 1966, 1967, and 1968 but who, due to the
cultural revolution, either had not been assigned or
had their assignments deferred.
In both of these actions it is possible to assert
that control was the primary purpose. but in fact the
ideological dimension was almost certainly uppermost
in Mao Tse-tung's mind. This difficulty presents it-
self in analyzing much of the data relating to Mao's
cultural revolution. Certainly it was absolutely nece-
ssary to bring the Red Guards under control if the re-
gime was to restore a semblance of order to the state
and the society, but Mao himself was obviously intent
on using the restoration of authority to proceed with
his basic socio-economic reforms. Among the. most salient
of these reforms is the creation of a New Chinese Man,
and within this goal the educational system and its pro-
ducts play a central role. The propaganda teams in the
educational system assumed the dual responsibility of
conducting the thought reform of the intellectuals and
assuring the exodus of the students and teachers from
the schools and campuses.
B. The Thought Reform of the Intellectuals
The transformation of the intellectual's value
structure has always been the principal target of Mao
Tse-tung's policies toward the intelligentsia. The
transformation or remolding of the intellectuals during
the post-Red Guard phase of the cultural revolution
would involve, as in the past, two distinct but re-
lated processes: struggle-criticism-transformation
sessions and physical labor. In both cases the "teacher"
would be the workers and the peasants who have been
defined often enough as the "basic revolutionary
forces", but particularly the workers who: are defined
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as the "class which leads the revolution." From the
very beginning of the current campaign, however, Mao's
instructions have contained the caveat that the major-
ity of the intellectuals can "integrate" with the
workers and peasants, and that during the struggle-
criticism-transformation sessions the intellectuals
must be given "a way out." The early stages of
"transformation" are noted for the apparent neglect
of this caveat.
Data from July and August indicate that "trans-
formation" in many schools was a grisly process. It
is highly probable that the process of "cleansing the
revolutionary ranks" of revolutionary committees formed
prior to the arrival of the propaganda teams was quite
brutal. Once the propaganda teams had established the
new authority structure, education and transformation
of the intellectuals became more regularized.
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The deportation of students, teachers, and other
members of the intelligentsia was part of a- grander
scheme in which all adults not fully employed in the
urban areas were to be sent to the rural areas, iin-
cluding the families of those not fully employed.
Also sent were many Party and government cadres who
had been removed from office as the administrative
structures of the Party and government were "stream-
lined." By the middle of March an estimated 20 mil-
lion persons had been removed from the urban areas
and sent to the countryside.
C. The Exodus
It is very necessary for educated young
people to go to the countryside to be re-
educated by the poor and lower-middle
peasants.. Cadres and other city people
should be persuaded to send their sons
and daughters who have finished junior
or senior middle school, college or
university to the countryside. Let's
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mobilize. Comrades throughout the
country should welcome them.
Mao Tse-tung
Once again, the Chinese student was ordered to
leave the school and university campus, and his home,
to seek ideological transformation through manual labor
and association with the peasant and worker. Parents
were told that their children are the property of the
state and people, and were urged to welcome the opportunity
given to their sons and daughters to demonstrate their
worthiness, their dedication to become genuine "revolu-
tionary successors." Press reporting, however, as early
as June indicated that the students were objecting to
the demands made upon them. Nevertheless, NCNA on 29
June reported that "thousands upon thousands" of stu-
dents were leaving Peking and other cities, including
Red Guards who were characterized as the "pathbreakers"
in the cultural revolution. This exodus was depicted
as demonstrating their loyalty to Mao Tse-tung and his
thought.
Parallel to, and complementing, the struggle-
criticism-transformation policy and the campaign to
send the students and teachers to the countryside,
was the assignment of jobs to the secondary and univer-
sity level graduates. The order of assignment was estab-
lished by the year of graduation. The first to be
assigned were the graduates of 1966, following which the
"graduates" of 1967 and 1968 were assigned. Peking
decided that, even though the schools had been essentia-
lly closed since 1966, the students who should have
graduated in 1967 and'1968 would be graduated regard-
less of their failure to complete their'course work.
The basic pattern of assignments was that graduates'
from scientific and other technical and engineering
courses would be assigned as far as possible to posi-
tions related to their fields. For the most part, all
other graduates were assigned to farms, factories and
other laboring positions. In addition, many students
were to report to their assignments and then be sent
to a farm or factory for six months to three years of
ma i.u a l labor.
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Two basic categories of university graduates were
apparently established prior to the actual assignment
of students: graduates in the hard sciences and other
fields that would relate to critical areas of national
defense and industrial develo ment and raduates in
other, less critical fields.
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the vast majority of university graduates were being sent
to perform manual labor, even though a large number may
be receiving assignments that will ultimately relate to
their particular areas of expertise. It is not clear,
however, how many university graduates will be assigned
skill related assignments following their tour as laborers.
Many will probably never be given roles related to their
particular training.
Middle school graduates appear to have been
assigned wholesale to the countryside and factories
to perform manual labor, with the exception of some
20%-25% of the junior middle school graduates who have
been permitted to continue their education. Among the
middle school graduates there is the distinct impression
that they have been sent to the countryside to settle
there permanently. Such a vast exodus of youth from
the urban areas has not been without considerable
objection from the parents and the students. Reports 25X1
from Canton describe mothers hanging onto the trucks
as their sons and daughters are herded into the
countryside.
It is clear that the studer.s understand the "instruction"
that they are to settle in the countryside to mean just
that.
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z3huxh 1,
The students are essentially powerless to, re-
sist their deportation, but resistance in the form of
avoidin assi nment is uite common.
Reports from Canton describe large numbers of
students who have gone into hiding to avoid deportation.
As their ration cards are cancelled when they are
assigned. they have to sneak out at night to the sur-
rounding villages to buy blackmarket food. The Workers
Provost Corps, a paramilitary police force established
by the Canton Municipal Revolutionary Committee and
supported by the PLA, was conducting raids in the city
to arrest these dissidents. Other reporting describes
Investigation Groups formed in all city and factory
units, and all neighborhood associations in Canton.
The Investigation Groups are charged with investiga-
ting their parent unit, and the families of members
of the unit, to determine who should be sent to per-
form manual labor and, very likely, to ascertain
that such people have in fact gone.
Communes have protested the influx of students,
teachers, and other urban dwellers and complain that
their food supplies are not sufficient to feed the new-
comers. Commune authorities are also disturbed by the
influx of unskilled and angry students who have become
a source of friction. Students were frequently phy-
sically incapable of performing a hard day's work,
and often went on "go slow" strikes or deliberately
broke their implements. This combination of attitudes
and attempts to disrupt the daily life of the commune
led to frequent fights between the peasants and the
students.
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The degree of resistance from the parents, at
least in attitude, to the deportation of their sons and
daughters can be seen in the campaign to muster their
support. Parents became the target in late 1968 of
propaganda teams urging them to "educate" their child-
ren and to explain to them the necessity of contribu-
ting to the "building of a new socialist countryside."
The Tsingtao Municipal Revolutionary Committee in Shan-
tung Province on 14 February 1969 broadcast a "Comfort
Letter" to the parents, thanking them for taking "the
lead-in sending your own children to the countryside."
The broadcast announced the decision of the revolu-
tionary committee to mobilize more youth, and urged the
parents of those students who had already gone to
"educate" other parents whose children had yet to go.
Educational Reform
On 8 August 1966, the "16 Points" of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution were adopted by the
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The
10th Point was concerned with educational reform:
In the great proletarian cultural revolu-
tion a most important task is to transform
the old educational system and methods of
teaching.
In this great cultural revolution the pheno-
menon of our schools being dominated by bour-
geois intellectuals must be completely changed.
In every kind of school we must apply
thoroughly the policy advanced by comrade
Mao Tse-tung, of education serving prole-
tarian politics and education being com-
bined with productive labor so as to enable
those receiving an education to develop
morally, intellectually and physically and
to become laborers with a socialist con-
sciousness and culture.
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The period of schooling should be short-
ened. Courses should be fewer and better.
The teaching material should be thoroughly
transformed, in some cases beginning with
simplifying complicated material. While
their main task is to study, students should
also learn other things. That is to say,
in addition to their studies they should
also learn industrial work, farming and
military affairs, and take part in the
struggles of the cultural revolution as they
occur to criticize the bourgeoisie.
This "Point" lays out quite succinctly Mao's basic
attitudes toward educational reform:
a) Destroy the dominance of Western trained or
oriented intellectuals.
b) Combine formal education with physical labor.
c) Shorten the period of formal education.
d) Combine academic training with actual work
experience.
In January 1967 these basic views were expanded
through the distribution of a "Discussion Draft" of
the "Views of the Central Government on Reformation of
the Educational System."* This lengthy document con-
sists of twenty-one sections and lists fifty-three
proposals. The proposals indicate the general trend
of reform and correlate highly with the experiments now
being conducted. The document lists twelve basic pro-
posals:
*The actual origin of this document is unknown, but its
correlation with current educational reforms indicates
an authoritative source.
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1) Enrollment in all schools should be based
upon "recommendation and selection", with
primary emphasis on enrolling the children
of workers, peasants and soldiers. Further-
more, financial assistance to these chil-
dren-should be expanded and increased.
2) Academic terms should be reduced. Primary
schools should be reduced from six to five
years; middle school from six'to four or
five years; university level institutions
should reduce their courses to two to four
years.
3) Examinations should I bolished along with
graduate theses. Acadent..c results should be
determined by group discussion.
4) Half-work, half-study programs should be
expanded quickly, utilizing a~policy of one
year of experimentation and two years of
expansion. All schools and universities
should be on a half-work, half-study basis.
Schools and universities should be established
within factory premises, or moved to the
frontier provinces. Urban universities and
colleges should be moved to the farming vil-
lages and PLA farms. Faculties of arts should
be moved to the rural areas first.
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5) Supervision of the schools should be under
the Party. Students should be organized into
squads, platoons, and companies on a military
model. Following this model, the student
units should have a political comissav at-
tached to them. Administration of the schools
should be through committees composed or repre-
sentatives of the teachers and students under
the direction of the Party branch.
6) Educational fees and expenses should be
higher in urban areas than rural areas, more
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in full-time than* half-time schools, and
higher in institutions of higher education
than in general schools.
7) Faculties of science an6 engineering should
be merged.
8) Academic titles should be abolished.
9) Distinctions between major and minor insti-
tutions should be abolished, and the special
priveleges granted to the more important
schools taken away, along with the appela -
tions "Ist Class" and "2nd Class."
10) Vacations as such should be abolished, and
the academic year structured so that students
will be free during the busy farming seasons.
11) While students are in middle schools, they
must go to the farms or factories, or join
the PLA for one year of training.
12) Students should no longer be permitted to
state their personal preferences for parti-
cular job assignments.
Although this draft contains a broad set of pro-
posals for discussion, there are :no specific proposals
for curriculum reform nor are there any concrete sug-
gestions for the division of time between formal aca-
demic studies and work experience. Nevertheless, the
document does demonstrate the basic thrust of reform
goals which is to reduce the probability of the crea-
tion of an intellectual elite divorced from the goals
espoused by Mao as he seeks to create his own particular
*The recommendations of 4)
indicate
that the full-time
educational system will be
modified
on the half-work,
half--study model, but the
half-work,
half-study system
will also be retained. The distinction between the sys-
tems will probably be blurred, but they will have separate
functions.
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utopia. In essence, Mao would like to use the educa-
tionpl system to neutralize, if not eradicate entirely,
the value structure that leads to the self-perception
of an individual as being a member of a particular elite,
and, furthermore, to neutralize the attitudes that lead
others to view an educated man as a member of an elite.
Within the Chinese culture, this latter goal will be
as difficult to achieve as the former goal of changing
self-perceptions.
A. Educational Reform: Higher Education
Mao's attitude toward university level education
was most recently stated in his directive of July 1968:
It is still necessary to have universities,
here I refer mainly to colleges of science
and engineering. However, it is essential
to shorten the length of schooling, revolu-
tionize education, put proletarian politics
in command, and take the road of the Shang-
hai Machine Tool Plant in training techni-
cians from among the workers and peasants
with practical experience and they should
return to production after a few years
study.
Thus far we have only two examples of experimentation
in higher education: Tungch:i University in Shanghai,
and the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant's "Worker Univer-
sity." Both experiments have been used as examples
by the regime, and i' is quite likely that they are
representative of the future shape of China's scienti-
fic and technical training. We shall first discuss
the "university" model and then the "factory" model.
Tungchi University: The University Model
Peking radio on 2 November 1967 broadcast the
plans for Tungchi's experiment in higher education.
The name of the university was changed to the "7 May
Commune" in honor of Mao Tse-tung's directive of 7 May
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1966, in which he said:
While their [the students] main task is
to study, they should in addition to their
studies, learn other things; that is, in-
dustrial work, farming and military
affairs.
Tungchi University was originally a German foundation,
established in 1907. Under the communists it became a
major center of civil engineering. On 1 June 1967,
Tungchi established a revolutionary committee composed
of representatives of the militia, "revolutionary"
cadres, and "revolutionary" students. The 2 Novem-
ber broadcast described Tungchi's plans as a tenta-
tive program combining academic and practical work,
and the "experience gained during the revolution in
education in 1958."
The "plan" for the university commune was de-
signed around a functional entity composed of the univer-
sity (education), the Shanghai Municipal Building
Construction Bureau (production) and the East China
Industrial Design and Research Institute (research and
design). 'The initial members of the commune were re=
ported as 220 teachers and students from Tungchi, 30
designers from the Institute, and three engineering
teams of 900 men from the construction bureau. The
commune was governed by two three-way alliances: the
first, and probably the most dominant, was an alliance
of "revolutionary leading cadres" (probably Party and
government cadres), leaders of the revolutionary masses
(Red Guards), and "militia-men." The second three-way
alliance was composed of educational, designing, and
construction personnel. The first alliance was pro-
bably responsible for administering and overseeing the
commune, while the latter was probably responsible for
conducting education.
The academic departments of the university were
abolished, and in their place a number of "Special
Committees" were established. Each of these committees
was composed of -members of the university, and members
of the production and'design'units forming the-commune.,
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Within each committee there were a number of "tuition
classes," each containing teachers, students, workers,
and engineers, all of whom were organized into "military
teams." At each level of the commune, the plan called
for a "Political Work Department"' within each Special
Committee there was to be a "political instructor'," and
in every tuition class there was to be a "political
officer. "
Although the commune was designed to assure con-
trol by the political structure built into the organiza-
tion, there are indications that the curriculum reform
discussed was describing a program less politically
oriented than other data have led us to anticipate.
The length of schooling was reduced from five or six
years to three years, and the preliminary discussion
of the reforms duly emphasized Mao's writings and
militia training. The description of the new curriculum,
however, demonstrated a somewhat apolitical content.
The plan stated that "academic courses will be devoted
more and more to theoretical studies from year to year
in proportionally progressive manner." The plan
out.ined the following three year schedule:
Ist Year.
~~-'Each student should devote his time to building
and construction."
Ind year.
Under the guidance of technical personnel or
teachers concerned, he should devote two thirds
of his time to mastering basic knowledge about
designing through participation in practical
designing work."
3rd Year.
The student "should strengthen the study of
special courses selectively, while devoting part
of his time to productive labor."
In implementing this design, the commune established three
experimental centers attached to construction sites, each
with two classes of more than thirty teachers and students.
On each of the construction' sites being used as "experi-
mental points" there was one engineering team composed of
about three hundred production workers and some designers.
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Summary
Tungchi University, as the "7 May Commune," combines
all of the basic elements of Mao's educational revolution
while at the same time its planned three-year curriculum
describes an acceptable program for producing narrowly
trained civil engineers. To this somewhat vocation-oriented
training has to be added the presence of the East China
Design and Research Institute as a possible source of post-
graduate training. The plan for the commune called for
progressively more theoretical work in each year, and in
the third year a student could select courses. It is,
therefore, entirely possible that a student attending the
new Tungchi could in fact obtain effective preparation in
the specialties that make up the training of a civil engineer.
The control apparatus, composed of the three-way
alliances, the Political Work Departments, and the politi-
cal instructors, commissars, and officers, reflects the
traditional watch-dog system that was part and parcel. of
the educational system prior to the cultural revolution.
The effect of this apparatus on the process and content of
education will be determined by tu;e extent to which politi-
cal training is inserted into the students' daily schedule.
It is possible that the combination of an abbreviated
curriculum, physical labor, Mao-think sessions, small-group
"daily life" discussions, and military training will ef-
fectively narro;?' the students' preparation to the bare
essentials of a civil engineer, or any other field of
specialization. At the present time it is impossible to
judge whether or not unduly emphasized political training
will undercut even the truncated program prepared by
Tungchi's commune. The formula presented, however, con-
tains the essence of Mao's reform goals; but implementation
of the policies will be the final test of the new system.
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The Shanghai Machine Tool Plant: The Factory Model
Although T ungchi's commune was touted as a national
model as late as September 1968, Mao's July directive on
universities and colleges of science and engineering referred
specifically to the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant. Thus this
factory became another national model.
The "investigation report" broadcast from Shanghai
on 22 July discussed at some length this plant's
experience with both college graduates and technicians
"promoted from among the ranks of the workers." Following
the style established by practically all investigation
reports illuminating national models, it .as determined
that the formal academic training of the college graduates
attached to the plant had not equipped them for production
roles in the factory. The worker technicians, on the other
hand, were among the most valuable assets of the plant.
The Shanghai Machine Tool Plant, drawing on Mao's thought
and its experience since the 1958 reforms, proposed that
future technical and engineering students should be recruited
from among junior and senior middle school graduates who
had two to four years experience in productive labor.
Furthermore, in order to assure commitment to Mao's egali-
tarian values, the college students should participate in
manual labor while attending school, and following gradua-
tion they should work as laborers for a period of time
and win "qualification certificates" from the workers
before receiving job assignments.
Some two months after making the above proposals,
the Shanghai plant established the "7.1 July Workers
University"--names! in honor of Mao's directive on colleges
and universities of science and engineering. Although
this "university" was obviously designed to be a national
model, few details on its organization or the content of
its curriculum were given. Essentially, this model follows
the pattern of advanced half-work, half-study programs set
up in the middle 1960's. The course will last from eighteen
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months to two years, and will produce individuals trained
in the design and manufacture of industrial grinding and
cutting tools. The various parts of the curriculum
will be taught by workers, technicians, and engineers
at the factory, and the students will be recruited from
among workers with actual production experience. The ini-
tial enrollment of fifty-two students all, reportedly,
have a minimum of five years experience in production.
Summary
The Shanghai Machine Tool Plant's "university" was
established as a model for future factory based, college
level, vocational courses. To a certain extent, middle
school graduates could be trained to assist in the design
and modification of machine tools by working with the
production of existing models. This Shanghai plant is
an appropriate base for such training, for it is recog-
nized as one of the most advanced production plants in
China. Prior to the cultural revolution, the plant was
reportedly conducting classes at the junior middle school,
senior middle school, and college level. Yet this experi-
ence was referred to only elliptically. For example, one
of its model workers, rather than being a graduate of its
own schools, was a graduate of the Shanghai Institute of
Mechanical Engineering.
Even assuming the capacity to produce skilled
technicians, and to some extent engineers, unless a factory
has an extensive research capacity it will not be capable
of producing the necessary basic research involved in
its own products. The Tungchi commune data indicate
the possibility of a research capacity, but the reporting
on proposals affecting science and engineering research
facilities--proposals that ideologically drew on the
Shanghai Machine Tool Plant'-; experience--has given some-
what firmer indicators of the future form of China's
research establishments.
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The Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering and the
Peking Aviation Institute: The Research Factor.
The research institutes of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences and its various branches, as well as all other
research centers, with the possible exception of national
defense related centers, have been seriously effected by
the cultural revolution. Propaganda teams have been vari-
ously reported as entering research institutes, and individ-
ual examples of the process of reform and revolution have
been described in the press and broadcasts. Even though
there are very little data on the universities and colleges,
even less have appeared relating to research centers.
Nevertheless, there have been two reports that refer spe-
cifically to the problem of research within the new
educational system.
An "investigation report" on the Shanghai Institute
of Mechanical Engineering published by Red Flag (#3) on
10 September 1968, and a proposal put forward by the Revo-
lutionary Committee of the Peking Aviation Institute
discussed the role of research. The Shanghai school's
recommendations discussed research in general, and the
Peking Aviation Institute's proposal's referred to research
centers related to national defense projects.
The Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering,
bowing to the "road shown by the Shanghai Machine Tool
Plant," proposed that following their "transformation"
colleges of science and engineering should become "facto
ries and research units" as well as schools. It was
recommended that actual production and research units
should propose research topics to the colleges. The
stated purpose of this suggestion was that by dealing
with problems set by production units and research units,
the students would be able to relate their studies to
actual problems rather than become involved in "empty
theorizing and scholasticism." It should be emphasized
that the proposal stressed the contribution such a system
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would make to the students' problem solving and analytical
powers, thus making education serve productive labor.
The stress on developing analytical powers contradicts
the basic format of "simplifying" scientific and engineer-
ing courses, for in fact research requires the discrete
separation of components of a problem. Nevertheless, the
ideological statement of purpose fulfills the political
requirements of the current campaign.
The Shanghai engineering school's recommendation did
not include any specific proposals for structurally relating
or integrating the university with production and research
units, but the concept developed dove-tails with a proposal
made by the Peking Aviation Institute in March 1968. The
aviation institute's recommendations referred specifically
to the design of a "new kind of" national defense research
institute, and proposed that research laboratories combine
with school factories and shops of "various departments
to form a unified teaching, scientific research and pro-
duction base." The task of this new structure was defined
as "national defense research and trial manufacture." In
addition, this new organization would "meet all the practi-
cal teaching requirements" of the new educational system.
It will be noticed that the two proposals are very
similar, conceptually, to the three-part "commune" of
Tungchi University in which production, research and
educational facilities were combined into one administra-
tive structure and integrated functionally. Assuming that
the "research units" are the various institutes of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences and other research organiza-
tions, and that the role of the "production units" can
be filled by the plants under the administration of the
various central ministries, it is possible that a cumber-
some but functioning research capacity could be developed
along the lines sketched out by the proposals. Where
production units, research units, and universities are
located physically close to one another, the research
factor could in fact be made a functional aspect of the
new educational system. Students could be trained in the
classroom, the laboratory, and the production line while
engaged in their formal education.
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Summary
With the entire structure of research facilities
undergoing "transformation" at the hands of the propaganda
teams, it is quite difficult to project the future form of
China's research capacity. However, it is evident that
in the process of developing and experimenting with a new
educational system, the need for research capabilities
has a very special place in the discussion. The image of
current developments now being projected indicates that
the reforms will not irreparably damage Chinese research
capacity. There is a definite pattern appearing in which
institutions of higher education will complement their
production of narrowly trained technicians with research-
oriented products. The present atmosphere,nonetheless,
is not conducive to producing the number of advanced
research personnel that the state could profitably use
in both its special weapons and other defense related
research, let alone the number that could be used in
basic research related to industrial and agricultural
development. Clearly China can use the technicians that
will be produced from the abbreviated curricula now being
contemplated, but for continuing development it is essen-
tial that these products be complemented by the development
of individuals capable of engaging in basic research.
B. Educational Reform: Primary and Middle Schools
Distinct from higher education, the press and
international and domestic broadcasts have been replete
with examples of reform and the process of reform in
China's primary and secondary education. In the urban
areas the immediate catalyst for change has been the
Worker-PLA Propaganda Team, and in the rural areas the
Poor and Lower-Middle Peasant Propaganda Team has been
the tool of reform, usually accompanied by a "representa-
tive"of the PLA.
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The basic pattern of administrative reform in the
urban, suburban, and rural areas has been the same. At
least superficially, the schools have been placed within
the administrative responsibility of local production
units. In urban areas the schools have come under a factory
or factories, in suburban areas under the dual control of
a factory and a commune or production brigade, and in the
rural areas under the control of the commune and the pro-
duction brigade. There are variations on the basic pattern,
but the overall thrust of the reform is to integrate
schools with production units.
Mao's attempt to create a mass society with a common
Maoist value structure, and his attempt to block a strati-
fication of society based upon levels of education is as
apparent at the primary and middle school level as it is
in higher education. As in the past however, the applica-
tion of policy will finally determin, the effectiveness
of the original decision(s).
Primary and Middle Schools: The Rural Experiment.
The basic policy is to move the primary and middle
schools down one step in the administrative ladder, and
to place schools under the direction of production units.
Middle schools are to be administered by the communes,
and primary schools by the production brigade. This
basic policy is subject to modifications designed to
meet the requirements of particular kinds of schools
(e.g., the agricultural middle school) and more discrete
reforms within particular communes and production brigades.
Within the individual commune, the new educational
system is designed to provide a five-year general primary
school course at the production brigade level, and a f our-
year middle school course at the commune level. In
addition, within each commune a number of "advanced"
primary schools have had junior middle school courses
added to their curriculum, thereby providing a basic
seven-year course within' the brigade. The last two
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years of the seven-year course are designed to provide
basic agricultural knowledge geared to the needs of the
brigade. Ideally, under this latter system, a student
would enter primary school at age six or seven and complete
the course at age 13 or 14 ready to participate in agri-
cultural production as a literate, skilled agricultural
worker. There are indications that the commune will also
run a central primary school and middle school that will,
to all intents and purposes, be the academic center of
the commune, as opposed to the brigade primary and junior
middle schools, and the general middle schools. These
latter are designed to be primarily vocational training
schools, whereas the central primary and middle school(s)
will probably be weighted more to the academic.
Even though the rural school system will come
under the administrative responsibility of the commune,
the county level structure--the county revolutionary
committee--appears to have general responsibility for
the educational system. The county level Party and
governmental structures have been functionally abolished,
at least for the time being, and the various cultural,
educational, and propaganda functions have been integrated
into the revolutionary committee. It is possible, although
there is no evidence for this, that the various governmental
and Party structures that administered and supervised
education prior to the cultural revolution still exist
and have their own unit level revolutionary committees.
At this time, however, there are no data indicating that
such units are involved in educational reform, although
individuals from pre-existing structures may be involved.
The process of reform is fairly uniform. Typically,
a three-in-one education leadership group, or educational
revolution committee, is formed at the commune and brigade
levels. The committee is frequently composed of a secre-
tary of the Party branch, the chairman of the poor and
lower-middle peasant association, and the unit's militia
commander. Other reports describe the three-in-one
combination as composed of "revolutionary cadres, revo-
lutionary teachers and students, and representatives of
the poor and lower-middle peasants." Each school and each
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class in the school will also form its leadership group.
The peasants are always described as the core of the
leadership group, but it is more likely that control is
actually in the hands of Party cadres and the PLA.
The faculty of the rural school is composed of both
full-time teachers and part-time lecturers drawn from the
members of the commune and brigade. The curriculum now
being developed reflects the intent of the new system.
Political education takes two basic forms: the history
of the village is taught by peasants who "recall the evils
of the past;" and cadres of the commune, production brigade
and production team lecture on current political issues.
In addition to this direct political education, the courses
in Chinese language have been completely converted to polit-
ical indoctrination. Reports of new text books indicate
that the "thought of Mao Tse-tung" is the core of the
new reading primers. Similarly, "politics" is now taught
at the primary school level. One report describes the
fifty-six lessons that constitute the political curriculum;
thirty-six lessons are devoted to quotations from Chairman
Mao, five are instructions from Lin Piao, and the remaining
fifteen are ballads praising Mao.
The second focus of the new system is vocational
training. Farm technicians and peasants now lecture on
farm machinery and agricultural techniques, and brigade
accountants lecture on applied arithmetic. In addition
to the vocational training, the PLA or the local militia
are to teach military affairs and physical training.
"Military affairs," however, will include more political
indoctrination.
PLEA influence in the rural schools is also found
in the reorganization of the schools along military lines.
The student body is to be organized into squads, platoons,
and compvnies. Similarly, a new student organization has
apparently been created to replace the Young Pioneers:
the "Young Red Soldiers." This new student organization
is not based upon the school but the production brigade,
and each brigade will form a battalion of "Young Red
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Soldiers" which will be broken down into squads, platoons
and companies at the production team level.
The integration of the middle and primary schools
into the commune has led to some rather complicated finan-
cial problems. Under the new system, the teachers are to
be paid on the basis of work-points. This is essentially
a process whereby individuals are paid in kind for the
work they do. The work of teachers is to be measured by
political criteria, but the teachers are also to be
subsidized for their professional expenses, and for sup-
port of and travel to their families, if the families do
not live in the brigade or commune where the teacher
works. As the teachers were paid on a monthly basis by the
state prior to their integration into the commune, they had
not accrued any work-points. Under these conditions, it
was decided that the state should pay the commune a lump-
sum to subsidize the teachers until they had accrued
sufficient work-points to receive food distributed by the
commune. As commune and brigade members, the teachers
would normally receive food and other allotments on the
basis of accrued work points. Similarly, the state will
subsidize teachers for their special pru'Lessional expenses
and for support of their families. The amount of the
subsidy will be determined by the unit in which they work.
Half-work, Half-Study Schools.
In addition to the full-time primary and middle
schools, and even though the new system includes physical
labor as part of the curriculum, -,:he half-work, half-study
schools are still included in the rural educational system.
The agricultural middle School appears to be the adminis-
trative responsibility of the commune, but the schools
themselves are established at both the commune and brigade
level.
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The structure of the faculty, curriculum, and
control organs follows the same pattern as the "full-time"
educational system. Education leading groups or educa-
tional revolution committees are set up at the commune
and brigade level, and may even be identical to those
responsible for the "full-time" system. Once again, it
is apparent that the Party cadres are the real source of
influence. In Inner Mongolia, for example, a secretary
of the brigade Party branch was identified as the chairman
of the agricultural middle school under investigation.
In Kirin, a report on an agricultural middle school identi-
fies the First Secretary of the commune Party branch as
the principal.
As in the past, agricultural middle schools are
two-year vocational courses in which the curriculum focuses
on the particular needs of the commune or brigade in
which the school is located. Distinct from reporting in
the middle 1960's, however, is the heavy emphasis now
put on political education and indoctrination. A report
analyzing an agricultural middle school in Kiangsi de-
scribes the curriculum and work experience that the school
provides in tea growing techniques, preliminary tea process-
ing, and laying out tea garCens. However, apparently in
order to provide time for pslitical education, formal
courses in Chinese and political science have been dropped.
Chinese language is now taught through Mao's works and
his latest instructions, and political science concen-
trates on Mao's analyses of revolution and his latest
instructions. Undoubtedly prior to the cultural revolu-
tion these courses contained a significant, if not
excessive amount of political indoctrination, but the
new system explicitly states that Mao's thought and
current political topics are the core of the courses.
The reform in rural education at this time is
attempting to combine ideological and vocational training in
Order to assure that, Mao's goals for revolutionary successors
areinot frustrated by the educational system. The pro-
duction units to which the schools are now attached have
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been given the responsibility of assuring that education
does not separate itself from production. Regardless of
the discussion in the press of half-wort;, half-study
schools, it is quite evident that, as Mao stated long ago,
the new educational system is designed to be a half-work,
half-study process. The half-work, half-study middle
schools, and the two years of junior middle school courses
attached to a few selected primary schools in the production
brigade, are designed for students whc,;e education will
terminate at the junior middle school level. This is indi-
cated by the system of enrollment for the agricultural
middle schools which provides that the students be selected
by the brigade from among students recommended by the com-
mune. The "full-time" system is designed to continue
through senior middle school, but even this process has
been abbreviated from 12 years to eight or nine years.
The new system, as it is publicly discussed, con-
tains some elements of common sense. If the new curricula
produce literate, trained, agricultural specialists familiar
with the particular needs of the area in which they will
work, the new educational system would provide a human
resource for improving China's agricultural base. The
weakness of the system'is that'it makes no apparent provi-
sion for preparing individuals for university work in the
agricultural sciences. The necessary background in
mathematics, chemistry, and other hard sciences is so far
lacking in any reported curricula. Furthermore, the sys-
tem is obviously designed in part to negate any initiative
the student might have to seek a university education.
At this time, it is difficult to determine exactly
how the new reforms will be applied. It is quite likely,
given past reforms of the educational system, that the
central primary and middle schools apparently being
established at the commune level will be a source of
trained students who have been selected for university
training. It should also be noted that, at this time,
references to central or commune level combined primary
and middle schools are absent from the public discussions
of reform, and that references to central primary and mid-
dle schools are very rare. The ideal today is to provide
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primary and junior middle schools for students in their
own villages, or where they will have to walk no further
than three li (one mile) to junior middle school. The
greatest emphasis has been on the primary-junior middle
school combination and the half-work, half-study schools.
Primary and Middle Schools: The Urban Experiment
The urban experiment follows the same pattern as
the reforms in the rural areas. Middle and primary schools
are placed under the direct c^_nt:al of production units--
usually factories--, except in ?..uburban areas where the
schools are administered jointly by factories and rural
production brigades. As in the rural areas, there are no
indications that the former government and Party structures
responsible for education are functioning in the new
system. Control today is in the hands of the revolutionary
committees of the municipalities aid factories, and the PLA.
One marked difference in the process of establish-
ing control and effecting reforms in individual schools in
the rural and urban areas is to be found in the role of
the propaganda teams. In rural areas, the propaganda
teams move from village to village, perhaps leaving a
representative(s) in the brigade. The responsibility for
reform is assumed by the "education leading group" or the
"educational revolution committee." In the urban areas,
the factory would send its propaganda team to a particular
school, and it would remain in the school overseeing the
reforms. The propaganda team in an urban school conducts
the "purification" campaigns, and the Mao Tse-tung thought
classes, and leads teachers and students in manual labor.
The primary cause of this difference is the role urban
middle school Red Guards played in the cultural revolution;
it is apparent that the level of violence in the urban
schools was significantly higher than in the rural areas.
One measure of the problem as it existed, and to some ex-
tent still exists in the urban schools, is that reporting
on the "revolution in education" began much later in
urban schools than it did in the rural areas of China.
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Middle Schools
The basic techniques of tahtng over a school
and proceeding with "purification" aid reform are similar
in all of the reporting. A factory would be assigned
the responsibility for a middle school located near the
plant, probably under a municipality-wide plan created by
the city's revolutionary committee. The factory would then
send a propaganda team, with PLA support, to the school
and abolish any previous revolutionary committee the school
may have established, together with any existing student
organizations. The school then became a department of the
factory under the direction of an "education leading gr-up"
or "educational revolution committee," headed by a vice-
chairman of the factory's revolutionary committee and
composed of teachers and students from the school, workers
from the factory, and representatives of the PLA and/or
the militia. T:tis committee, supervised by the factory's
revolutionary committee, would structure a new revolutionary
committee for the school. The revolutionary committee
thus constitutes the administrative and political leadership
of the school, but the propaganda team is evidently responsi-
ble for conducting the initial purge and the reforms that
follow.
The purge of the teachers and students is the first
step taken by the propaganda team. Or. 2 September a propa-
ganda team from the Tientsin Municipal Cable Factory entered
a middle school, and its actions are representative of the
role of propaganda 'teams in most, if not all., urban middle
schools. After "cleaning up class ranks, " according to
the People's Daily of 8 December, 77 teachers were left,
42 percen of w om were from "families of exploiting
classes" and/or "old-tyt?e" schools. The:-A teachers were
required to undergo reeducation by the wortters, peasants,
and soldiers in order to remove their political blemist.es.
One group of seven teachers went with "support-the-frontier
youth" to Inner Mongolia. Another group of 16 went with
the students to engage in manual labor in the countryside
and in the factories. The remaining 23 went to the "grass-
roots" to perform manual labor.
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Once a school's "class ranks" are "purified,"
essentially a purge of the teachers and the most frac-
tious Red Guards, the structure of the school itself is
reorganized. Each grade of the school becomes a military
company. A company committ7e is organized composed of
workers, militiamen,and teachers and students. Each company
is then broken down into squads and platoons.
The first stage in actual curriculum reform occurs
during the establishment of classes in the thought of Mao
Tse-tung and daily self-criticism sessions. These classes
are conducted by the propaganda team, but the PLA repre-
sentative is the general overseer of the process. While
these intensive Mao-think classes are being conducted and
students and teachers are being put through the self-
criticism sessions, curriculum reform is undertaken. The
initial curriculum reforms reported stayed very close to
the model established by the rural schools. PLA or
militiamen taught political courses; workers lectured
on basic industrial and agricultural knowledge; factory
accountants taught basic mathematics. The full-time
teachers--those that remained--taught "revolutionary"
literature and art, PLA and militiamen taught military
affairs and physical education.
This pattern of curriculum reform, if it is followed,
would be disastrous. in terms of preparation for the uni-
versity. On 7 March, however, a People's Daily article
reporting on the status of the revolution in education
at the Canton #61 Middle School indicated that the first
blush of reform may not, in fact, reflect the future of
China's educational system. The argument presented in
the report stated that Mao's directive that, "in addition
to their studies, /students7 should learn other things,"
includes the study of "socialist culture." The curriculum
of this particular school, under this rubric, was developed
to include the Chinese language, foreign languages (not
specified), mathematics "beginning with abacus, calcula-
tion and survey;" physics, including dynamics, electricity,
and "other things;" basic chemistry, industrial chemistry,
agricult:iral chemistry, and national defense chemistry.
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The expressed purpose for introducing foreign languages
into the curriculum was "to satisfy the needs for the
development of science and technology and world revo-
lution." Not only was the need for studying science
and technology recognized as a contribution to both
industry and agriculture, but the need to study foreign
languages to implement such studies was also recognized.
The clear implication is that students need to study
foreign languages in order to read foreign texts and jour-
nals. Since such skills are primarily applicable to college
level work, the further implication is that, at least at
this school in Canton, students are to be prepared for
university work.
The report on the Canton #61 Middle School is, to
the author's knowledge, the first and only such report of
this kind, and most of the reporting continues to stress
the vocational aspects of the new curriculum. Students
and teachers as part of the new education process mill
participate in productive labor, primarily in the factories,
but also in nearby production brigades. The manner in
which students and teachers will divide their time between
manual labor and classroom studies is not yet clear.
Kwangming Daily on 5 January described the system being
used at the Penhsi, Liaoning Province, #14 Middle School,
and this system could become standard practice. The
teachers and students were divided into four groups; one
group studied in the school while the three other groups
aent separately +o a factory, the countryside, and a local
armed forces camp for labor and military training. Eac?I
group spent one month in the plant, two weeks on a commune,
and two weeks with the local armed forces. The propaganda
team divided up responsibility for the students and was
responsible for the individual groups.
Primary Schools
Primary schools follow the same pattern of reform
as the middle schools, but there are variations designed
to meet the particular role and problems of primary
schools. The main difference between primary and middle
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schools is that many of the former are two-session
schools and many of the children are too young to per-
form physical labor. Administratively, primary schools
are beii:g placed under the wings of factories, neighbor-
hood revolutionary committees and street committees. The
factory propaganda team admits members of these committees
into the primary school education leading group,and coop-
erates with the neighborhood and street committees in
organizing student activities outside the school.
The children are organized into squads, platoons,
and companies according to their residences, and the "Young
Red Soldiers" appear to be the successor to the Young
Pioneers as the principal student youth organization.
The Young Red Soldiers, together with other students, organ-
ize Mao Tse-tung's thought sessions outside school, and
the neighborhood committee provides space and political
instructors. In addition, the Young Red Soldiers are
organized into propaganda teams and are regularly sent
out into the streets, factories, and rural areas to take
part in propaganda activity. Some reports state that
the older children participate in manual labor, and when
they do they take along the younger children. The teams
also have two hours of organized team activity each day,
most of which is passed in political song-fests and dances.
There are no details on primary school curriculum
reform, but there is no' reason to believe that the goals
and content differ in any marked way from middle school
curricula. Reading and other exercises will be drawn
from Mao's writings, and whatever substantive knowledge
is imparted to them will undoubtedly focus on industry
and agriculture.
Half-Work, Half-Study Schools
Half-work, half-study schools in the urban areas
have c-1we under the same kind of criticism leveled at the
rural agricultural schools. According to the reports in
the press, the half work, half-study schools established
in the 1960's have, "from the very First day," been
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undermined by individuals who taught the students to
value the goals of "bourgeois technicians." Mathematics,
dynamics, mechanical drawing and other abstract academic
subjects took precedence over Mao's thought and politics
The propaganda teams from the factories administering
these schools, with assistance from the PLA, purged the
ranks of the teachers and began to return the schools to
their original orientation. Curriculum reform involved
the restoration of the original vocational classes, and
the emphasis of vocational training was complemented by
the stated concern of assuring that the student workers
who attended the schools would return to their factories
when they had completed their training. Usually the course
conducted at the half-work, half-study school was cut in
half, and modifications were introduced to assure a high
'evel of political indoctrination.
Enrollment for the half-work, half-study schools
follows the pattern set when the schools were established.
They are to recruit from middle school graduates, or
from workers engaged in the same areas covered by the
schools' curricula. Middle school graduates, however,
must work in the factory to which the school is attached
fcr three to six months prior to beginning their studies.
Primary emphasis in the half-work, half-study
schools is on abolishing the deviations that became common
prior to the cultural revolution. Essentially, and perhaps
naturally, the schools sought better educated students
and began to emphasize classroom studies rather than
integrating these studies with actual factory production
problems. It is even reported that some schools established
research departments, and more and more the vocational tra:ir. ing
focus of the schools began to fade away. This probably
.Is an accurate description of developments in the larger
r,lants, such as the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant discussed
above, where advanced courses would be an ideal way to
develop technicians capable of contributing to the plart's
research capacity.
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Urban Schools: Summary
The highly politicized and narrow vocational cur-
ricula described in the press and provincial, national,
and international broadcasts follow Mao's predispositions
toward the type of education most suitable for creating
the new Chinese man. His ambitions, according to Mao's
fiat, are to be narrowed by creating a system that almost
explicitly states that the factory and the commune are
to be his ultimate end. Nevertheless, the report on the
Cantor. #61 Middle School provides sufficient cause to
speculate that some schools will in fact prepare students
for the university.
Prior to the cultural revolution, there is no doubt
that many Chinese students sought a university education.
Certainly by the time a student had entered senior middle
school his sights would be set on a university. Whether
or not the new curricula and administrative structure will
in fact lower the ambitions of a student is a matter of
conjecture, but there is no doubt that one of the functions
of the new educational system is to change the aspirations
of the student.
If the policies now being applied are implemented
with little consideration for the effects they will have
on higher education, thin even if students are admitted
to a university they will be far from adequately prepared,
even by Chinese standards. There is the distinct possi-
bility, however, that specialized senior middle schools
will emerge whose primary function will be to prepare
univer,,ity students. At the present time, however, the
data do not permit us to make any firm judgements.
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III. CONCLUSIONS AND SPECULATIONS
The current reforms stem from Mao's longstanding
distrust of the intellectuals. This distrust is based
upon Mao's perception of the intelligentsia as an elite
structure competing with the Party for a leadership role
in the society. Traditionally the Chinese intellectual
has seen himself as a member of an elite, and in imperial
times this elite did administer the state and have the
predominant leadership role in society. An enduring value
of the society was, and is, to use the academic ladder
for social and political mobility.
After gaining control of the mainland in 1949,
the Chinese Communist Party set itself the tasks of
industrializing the state while at the same time it
crr.ated a new political system and fundamentally recast
the social system. Rapid economic development was an
obvious goal, and the new political system was designed
to structure the absolute control of t'e Party. Revolu-
tionizing society, however, was the mo,it difficult goal
to achieve because it required the restructuring of some
of the major values of the society. It was this goal
that was to complicate the achievement of the goals set
for the political and economic systems.
The process of education became a major target of
x?eforms, for it was to be used as the principal tool for
restructuring the value structure and be the source of
'worthy successors" to Mao's revolution. Howeve.L?, the
goal of rapid economic development was also to be sought
through the utilization of the products of the educational
system, and thus the two functions of the educational
system resulted in conflicting goals and policies. On
the one hand the state needed to produce large numbers
of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, administrators,
and other professionals to build and supervise an advanced
industrial state; on the other hand, the new political
leadership was demanding a loyalty to Mao and the Party
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that approached a demand for fanaticism. The result of
these conflicting demands was an educational system that
compromised academic achievement in favor of intense
political socialization.
The intensity of the political demands on the edu-
cational system varied, the highest threshold prior to
the current period being achieved during the Great Leap
Forward of 1958-1960. Indeed, many of the current reforms
can be traced back to this period. Following the Great
Leap Forward, there was a period of retrenchment in which
the educational system was directed to recover some of
the ground it had lost during those disastrous years.
In 1963-65, however, Mao revived his educational reform
goals and nation-wide experiments were conducted in the
development of vocational high schools and vocationally-
oriented college level courses.. During this period pre-
ceeding the cultural revolution, there was an attempt to
create an educational system that essentially divided
the students into two groups. The brighter students
went through the full-time education process that cul-
minated in advanced university degrees, while the less
talented were channelled through a vocational process
that combined classroom studies with experience in indus-
trial and agricultural production. This dual system was
to become a target of Mao's wrath, primarily because, in
Mao's eyes, it still produced intellectual aristocrats
of dubious political reliability, and the technicians
produced by the vocational system were absorbing "bourgeois"
values from their instructors in the classrooms. In Mao's
view, the problem of the intellectual elite had yet to
be solved.
The reforms introduced by the cultural revolution
bear Mao's mark; his fears and perceptions are the source
of the current "educational revolution." Once again the
academic content of the educational system has been
sacrificed to the political goals of creating a new Chinese
man. The use of the educational system to restructure
the values of China's youth has, as in the past, been
combined with an intensive campaign to "reeducate" the
intelligentsia. The process of the cultural revolution
has struck a severe blow to the intelligentsia, and has
made the life of an intellectual a politically dangerous
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goal. For the student, even if he should continue to
harbor academic excellence and the life of an academic
as personal goals, the prospects of achieving a univer-
sity education are extremely poor. The new system is
designed to focus the students' goals on, at best, the
role of a technician in a factory or on a rural commune.
There is no clear picture evolving of the future Chinese
university, but it is quite likely that for a year or so
at least, with the exception of some institutions con-
centrating on specialties deemed essential by the regime,
it will produce only higher technicians. Admittance to
a university will require very strong political bona
fides, and class background will prove to be an extremely
important and rigidly applied criterion.
Even assuming progress toward a university degree,
the student will find this progress an extremely arduous
experience if current reforms are r:.g;..dly and systematically
implemented. Physical labor in seccnc ry schools will
be followed by a period of one, two, or three years of
manual labor prior to enrollment in a university. Thus
a
student's ambitions would have to be extremely strong
I -P
he were to attempt to climb the academic ladder of
success.
There are, however, some indications that the ex-
treme aspects of the current reforms are beginning to be
modified. Articles and editorials in the press since
last February have stressed the concept that "intellectuals
must be given a way out," and that Mao's teachings on
this have always been clear. Nwangming Daily on 27 Febru-
ary wrote:
Cha'rman Mao teaches us: 'The great majority
of the intellectuals of our country are will-
ing to be progressive and to reform themselves,
and can be reformed.'
Nanfang Daily of Canton on 27 March editorialized:
Some intellectuals with problems in their
academic thinking may not be ostracized
so long as they still support socialism
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politically and are willing to follow
Chairman Mao to make revolution. Their
useful knowledge is to be utilized to
serve socialism. (Emphasis added
Stressing the long, drawn out process of "reeducation",
the editorial continued:
It is unrealistic to think that their
[intellectuals] old ideas and work styles
will be completely changed after they
have attended a few meetings or gone to
rural areas once or twice.
The thrust of the policy is still clearly aimed at "re-
education", but the intellectuals are not to be forced
into immediate "transformation"; furthermore, it is
clearly stated that their knowledge is to be utilized,
In view of the cacophony of propaganda praising the
inventiveness of the workers and peasants, and their
osmotic inspiration from Moro Tse-tung, suchi observations
may presage a relaxation of policy.
Similar currents of propaganda can be observed
being directed at the students. The terrorizing of the
intellectuals and the frontal assault on the educational
system have raised doubts among the students as to the
viability of an academic career and the usefulness of
education. The press has begun to respond to these
doubts. Shanghai's influential Wen Hui Pao on 18 March
published an editorial on education directly confronting
the student response to the effect of the cultural revolu-
tion on education:
In the current educational revolution there is
also a need to criticize the concept of you
will get nothing out of study.' This is but
another form of the concept of 'studying to
become an official,' and, similarly, it is a
bourgeois ideology. Some people, contaminated
by Liu Shao-chi's fallacy of 'studying to
become an official,' have the single interest
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of becoming officials and becoming rich.
They use books as the rungs of a ladder
to climb upward. Finding that this road
has been blocked., they have swung from one
extreme to another. Dispirited, they
spread such fallacies as 'Attending uni-
versities is an error in orientation.
Since we will have to do manual work, what
is the use of studying.'
The editorial ibserved that "study is still the thing when
we enter a school, but it depends on how you go about
doing it." Studies are to serve the proletariat, accord-
ing to the editorial, but the stuient should maintain
his university oriented goals.
This softening of the policies directed toward
education has not been reflected in references to the
reform of higher education. Nevertheless, there are
indications of dissatisfaction with the lack of progress
toward educational reform in the universities. Libera-
tion Daily on 30 MarcL published an editorial concerning
the universities, telling the propaganda teams that the
time had come to:
...boldly explore, courageously implement,
and do our best to determine concrete
methods on how to run the physics, engineer-
ing, medical, and humanities departments
of socialist universities.
Evidently the purge of the universities has been slowing
down progress toward the development of model universities
designed to demonstrate the kinds of programs the new
universities should be creating. Wen Hui Pao on 29 March
suggested that educational reforms could be "grasped"
while at the same time "we are purifying class ranks."
The emphasis in these and other editorials is on putting
concrete reforms into practice, but thus far we have no
indicators beyond the Tungchi University and Shanghai
Machine Tool Plant experiments suggesting what modifica-
tions will actually :tee made and how they will be imple-
mented.
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The effect of the cultural revolution on China's
educational system and the costs of this effect to China
are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure.
By June of this year China's educational system will have
been out of production for three full years, and there
are indications that the universities may remain closed
for an additional two years. Although the classes of
1967 and 1968 have been "graduated"--the statuE of the
'69 class is unclear--they have not completed their uni-
versity or high school requirements. Assuming a five
year program, the class of 1960, will have completed three
years' training, the class of 1967 four years, and the
class of 1969, if it is graduated, will have completed
only two years' training. For three years the universi-
ties have failed to enroll any new students, and it is
possible that students will not be enrolled this spring
for classes beginning in the fall. China has "graduated"
between 340.000 and 510,000 students who have not com-
pleted theiv university requirements, assuming a gradua-
tion of 170,000 students from institutions of higher
education each year. The number of middle school students
"graduated" runs into the millions.
Breaking down the 340,000 base, 131,000 would be
engineers, 42,600 would be in medicine, including health
sciences and pharmacy, 28,800 would be in agricultural
fields, 17,000 would be in natural science fields,
42,600 would be in economics, political science, foreign
languages and other fields. Assuming that the institu-
tions of higher education do not recruit students for the
coming year, the educational system will have failed to
graduate approximately 680,000 students on time, and at
a minimum the figure will be around 510,000.
The number of living graduates of higher educa-
tion in 1966 was estimated to be 1,879,000. Thus the
cultural revolution has cost China, temporarily, an addi-
tion of one-third to its higher education graduates.
Tt-c :significance of these figures is impossible to
evaluate with any degree of precision. It can be argued
that China was producing more university graduates than
it could usefully employ prior to the cultural revolution;
therefore, the numerical cost described above is not too
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significant. Furthermore, 55 percent of the scientific
and technical graduates were produced in the five-year
period 1962-66; therefore, they are quite y')urg and the
death rate is correspondingly low. This characteristic,
however, has to be modified by the observation that the
average age of competent research and engineering leaders
is h'.gher than we would expect because of the continuing
dependence upon older scientists and engineers trained
in Europe and the United States and scientists trained
in the Soviet Union. The buffer that the characteristic
of youth provides for China is, thus, not as effective
as it might appear to be.
The latter question raises one of the more serious
costs of the cultural revolution--Ph.D.-level scientists.
Data on China's post-graduate training are extremely
scanty, but it has been estimated that by 1970 China
would have produced some 6,500 Ph.D.-level scientists.
The cultural revolution will probably reduce this number
to some 3,000. Thus the burden on China's older European
and V.S. trained scientists and the Russian trained
specialists will not be reduced to the extent that it
might have been, and the expansion of China's research
capacity has been severely limited.
The overall impact of the cultural revolution on
educa-Li,:,n and its costs to China's nation l development
goals span in terms of industrial and agricultural
growth, and research and development capacity is also
difficult to judge. To some extent, this impact will
be cushioned by the youth of China's body of higher
education graduates. Nevertheless, this cushion will
lose its effectiveness, such as it is, if the present
reforms are pursued with vigor over the next year or so.
It is still possible for China to Eeek its national
defense-related goals by allocating teams of scientists
to projects such as special weapons development, but
such a decision draws from a pool of scientific minds
that is quite small. By allocating resources to nuclear
weapons and delivery systems, for example, the regime
cannot but avoid reducing the resources applicable to
other, perhaps equally significant, developmental prob-
lems such as nuclear power sources for industrial use
and scientific approaches to agricultural development.
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Although it is possible for China to adjust its
national defense-related projects to a lower expansion
rate of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, etc., at
the expense of other areas of national development, the
more abstract costs to the educational system may be
more difficult to correct. The reign of terror that
has been inflicted on China's educational system and
its research structure has left a residue of fear among
the intelligentsia and serious doubts among the students
as to the viability of an academic car.er. It should
also be observed, however, that this is not the first
time that the intelligentsia and aspirants for a place
in this stratum have come under attack, Mao has never
disguised his distrust of the intellectuals, and the
intelligentsia has been subjected to intense olitical
socialization for some twenty years.
The campaign
style of politics has led to a sophisticated behavior
pattern that could easily lead to a perspective of the
cultural revolution that permit,.; the ind~ ; idual to await,
in his eyes, the inevitable relaxation of the policies,
or at least a less vigorous implementation of the
policies of reform.
The impact of the cultural revolution on the in-
tFlligentsia and the students cannot, in fact, be
determined. The national and regional press give indi-
cations that the students are disillusioned and question
the usefulness of a university education, and have grave
doubts about proceeding along the academic path. If the
current policies are rigidly administered, China's youth
will be reluctant to choose the academic ladw~r. It is
more likely, however, that the current indicators reflect
a modification of the policy, and that the students and
intellectuals will perceive the current extremes as a
short range tactical effort. Nevertheless, it is apparent
that Mao's views and objectives have not changed. The
political demands on the intelligentsia will continue to
be high, but the awareness of the "rules of the game"
will tend to reduce the actual impact of the reforms.
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Noi:etheiess,' the experiences of millions of Red Guards
will reemphasize for them the unpredictability of regime
policy. Their new status is considerably below that which
they probably expected from their earlier role as Mao's
?,A Mip., w...i
illusionment with Mao's Ch.na will almost certainlylbe- L~.)nI
come more common as the months pass. Prior to the cultural
revolution China's youth had little confidence in a pro-
ductive life; now they probably have even less. For many
of China's youth, the ladder of success was either the
Party or the university. The Party has yet to be rebuilt,
and the universities and research units are still being
revolutionized. Perception of these two structures as
career goals will depend to a large extent on future de-
velopments within them. For the most part, most students
certainly fear a life of servitude on the commune or in
a factory with no clear way of avoiding such a fate,
except possibly through a career in the People's Libera-
tion Army.
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