Abstract
After Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 reform and opening, foreigners had a chance to see adult education in China. As a result, many met Yao Zhongda, Chief of the Bureau of Workers’ and Peasants Education. From 1921 onwards, adult education has been a vital corollary of Communist revolution. Although Yao’s biography was extremely relevant to what foreigners saw, few knew much about their host. Yao made enthusiastic responses to Roby Kidd’s efforts to “open” China to the Toronto-based International Council of Adult Education. By 2013, he was 88 years old. The primary purpose of this paper was to capture his biography and reflect on what it means for 21st century China. A secondary purpose was to alert Beijing scholars to the importance of this key actor in the colourful drama of globalization and adult education in China
Highlights
After Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 reform and opening, foreigners had a chance to see adult education in China
There is third world China, which depends upon family ties largely beyond official control
Adult education has a very colourful history, it has increasingly been sidelined by training, human resource development (HRD), lifelong learning, or techno-zealotry wherein everyone learns on a computer
Summary
By 2013, Yao Zhongda was 88 years old, and still an outstanding figure in 20th century Chinese adult education. There is socialist China – the Maoist world built within danwei (former work units) where status depended upon rank. It exists in all cities, but the Northeast. University scholars, in Beijing, are more affiliated with the third than either of the other two social systems. Because of his Hebei childhood, Yao understands life in third world China. He has links to the other two but no strong affiliation with any, the disjunction between his position and the interest of university scholars. For Canadian adult educators interested in “opening” China in the 1980s, he had an unrivalled view of adult education for revolution at the highest levels of the Chinese state
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