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China Chapter 4. Education and Culture
SINCE THE REPUDIATION of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the
development of the education system in China has been geared
particularly to the advancement of economic modernization. Among
the notable official efforts to improve the system were a 1984
decision to formulate major laws on education in the next several
years and a 1985 plan to reform the education system. In unveiling
the education reform plan in May 1985, the authorities called for
nine years of compulsory education and the establishment of the
State Education Commission (created the following month). Official
commitment to improved education was nowhere more evident than in
the substantial increase in funds for education in the Seventh
Five-Year Plan (1986-90), which amounted to 72 percent more than
funds allotted to education in the previous plan period (1981-85).
In 1986 some 16.8 percent of the state budget was earmarked for
education, compared with 10.4 percent in 1984. Since 1949,
education has been a focus of controversy in China. As a result of
continual intraparty realignments, official policy alternated
between ideological imperatives and practical efforts to further
national development. But ideology and pragmatism often have been
incompatible. The Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Socialist
Education Movement (1962-65) sought to end deeply rooted academic
elitism, to narrow social and cultural gaps between workers and
peasants and between urban and rural populations, and to "rectify"
the tendency of scholars and intellectuals disdain manual labor.
During the Cultural Revolution, universal education in the interest
of fostering social equality was an overriding priority.
The post-Mao Zedong Chinese Communist Party leadership viewed
education as the foundation of the Four Modernizations. In the
early 1980s, science and technology education became an important
focus of education policy. By 1986 training skilled personnel and
expanding scientific and technical knowledge had been assigned the
highest priority. Although the humanities were considered
important, vocational and technical skills were considered
paramount for meeting China's modernization goals. The
reorientation of educational priorities paralleled Deng Xiaoping's
strategy for economic development. Emphasis also was placed on the
further training of the already-educated elite, who would carry on
the modernization program in the coming decades. Renewed emphasis
on modern science and technology, coupled with the recognition of
the relative scientific superiority of the West, led to the
adoption, beginning in 1976, of an outward-looking policy that
encouraged learning and borrowing from abroad for advanced training
in a wide range of scientific fields.
Beginning at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party
Congress Central Committee in December 1978, intellectuals were
encouraged to pursue research in support of the Four Modernizations
and, as long as they complied with the party's "four cardinal
principles"--upholding socialism, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the leadership of the party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Zedong Thought--they were given relatively free rein. But when the
party and the government determined that the strictures of the four
cardinal principles had been stretched beyond tolerable limits,
they did not hesitate to restrict intellectual expression.
Literature and the arts also experienced a great revival in the
late 1970s and 1980s. Traditional forms flourished once again, and
many new kinds of literature and cultural expression were
introduced from abroad.
Data as of July 1987
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