Education and university enrolment policies in China, 1949-1971

Abstract

Before the Cultural Revolution, observers of the Chinese communist regime assumed that the traditional links between education and society still held. Certainly Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch{u2019}i both inherited the traditional ideas; but the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution revealed that each placed his own interpretation on them. This study examines Party directives regarding the selection of students for higher education in the light of the conflict between {u2018}proletarian{u2019} and {u2018}revisionist{u2019} approaches. It also investigates, and refutes, the charges the Red Guards levelled against revisionist educational methods and argues that inequalities in the education system developed by default. The changing role of higher education in an industrial society is a problem not confined to China. This monograph will therefore interest not only those especially concerned with the politics of China, but also students of comparative education. Show more