Educational Reform and Manpower Policy in China, 1955-1958

Abstract

This paper will demonstrate that the radical educational reforms of the Great Leap Forward were initiated because of changing conceptions of manpower needs, and economic development plans and priorities. As the Chinese leadership became increasingly sensitive to the limited applicability of the capital-intensive strategy of development of the First Five Year Plan, they began to scale down the training of a limited number of very highly educated technical personnel. The new, more labor-intensive strategy required a much larger number of less well-educated, but more highly motivated and politically conscious workers. These changes in manpower needs eventually led to the radical educational reforms that emerged during the Great Leap Forward. We will trace the development of Chinese manpowertraining policy in the crucial years, 1955-1958. During those years the Chinese government experimented with a variety of programs and policies that would enable them to overcome the limitations of the Soviet model of development which they had adopted in their First Five Year Plan. Since manpower training policy is central to any developmental scheme, the