Popularisation Policies in Chinese Education from the 1950s to the 1970s

Abstract

Although there have been certain fluctuations in the degree of centralisation of policy-making and administration in education during the past three decades in China, these all occur within the overall context of Communist Party control at the highest state level. Rather than examining the niceties of variation in this pattern, I wish here to describe some of the measures taken to popularise education in China, since this is closely related to the question of democracy. The ideals of Western-style democracy were unknown in traditional China, and only during the Western-inspired democratic movement at the beginning of this century, known as the May Fourth Movement, did such ideals gain favour among Chinese intellectuals, especially the students and teachers of the universities. At the same time many of these new intellectuals advocated a drive to 'take education to the masses', particularly to teach the peasants to read and write. Political realities, however, thwarted such developments during the ensuing decades, except in the rural areas where the Communists were able to exert their control and carry out a programme of basic education for the peasants. After the Communists gained control of the whole country, they embarked on a programme of popular education, extending the programmes of bringing literacy and basic education to the rural areas and to the working people. These educational developments operated within the political framework of People's Democracy which the Communist Party formulated as its policy of government after 1949. I will briefly examine this policy before going on to describe the Government's later educational aims and policies and particularly the programmes to popularise basic education. I will touch on the popularisation of higher education during the revolution in education in the 1970s. By popularisation I refer not to the expansion of higher education in terms of establishments or student numbers, but to the policies which gave priority to students of working-class background and adapted courses to their experience and needs. Higher education, especially universities, remained highly selective, but the criteria of selection of students and the process of allocating jobs on graduation were designed to narrow the gap between social strata, between town and countryside and between formal and non-formal education. It remains to be seen whether these two streams of education, formal and non-formal, basic and higher level education can be combined to serve popular needs.