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China POLICY TOWARD INTELLECTUALS
Background
The current status of Chinese intellectuals reflects traditions
established in the imperial period. For most of this period,
government officials were selected from among the literati on the
basis of the Confucian civil service examination system
(see Restoration of Empire
, ch. 1;
Traditional Society and Culture
, ch.
3). Intellectuals were both participants in and critics of the
government. As Confucian scholars, they were torn between their
loyalty to the emperor and their obligation to "correct wrong
thinking" when they perceived it. Then, as now, most intellectual
and government leaders subscribed to the premise that ideological
change was a prerequisite for political change. Historically,
Chinese intellectuals rarely formed groups to oppose the
established government. Rather, individual intellectuals or groups
of intellectuals allied themselves with cliques within the
government to lend support to the policies of that clique.
With the abolition of the civil service examination system in
1905 and the end of the last imperial dynasty in 1911,
intellectuals no longer had a vehicle for direct participation in
the government. Although the absence of a strong national
government would have been expected to provide a favorable
situation for maximum intellectual independence, other inhibiting
factors--such as the concentration of intellectuals in foreigncontrolled treaty ports, isolated from the mainstream of Chinese
society, or in universities dependent on government or missionary
financing--remained. Probably the greatest obstacle to the
development of an intellectual community free of outside control
was the rising tide of nationalism coupled with the fear of being
accused of selling out to foreign interests. In 1927 the newly
established Guomindang government in Nanjing attempted to establish
an intellectual orthodoxy based on the ideas of Sun Yat-sen, but
intellectuals continued to operate with a certain degree of freedom
in universities and treaty ports
(see Nationalism and Communism
, ch. 1). Following the Japanese invasion and occupation of large
parts of China in 1937, the Guomindang government tightened control
over every aspect of life, causing a large number of dissident
intellectuals to seek refuge in Communist-administered areas or in
Hong Kong.
When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949,
intellectuals came under strict government control. Educated
overseas Chinese (see Glossary)
were invited to return home, and
those intellectuals who remained in China were urged to contribute
their technical expertise to rebuilding the country. Intellectuals
were expected to serve the party and the state. Independent
thinking was stifled, and political dissent was not tolerated.
In mid-1956 the Chinese Communist Party felt secure enough to
launch the
Hundred Flowers Campaign (see Glossary)
soliciting
criticism under the classical "double hundred" slogan "Let a
hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend."
"Let a hundred flowers bloom" applied to the development of the
arts, and "let the hundred schools of thought contend" encouraged
the development of science. The initiation of this campaign was
followed by the publication in early 1957 of Mao Zedong's essay "On
the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People," in which
he drew a distinction between "constructive criticisms among the
people" and "hateful and destructive criticism between the enemy
and ourselves." In August 1957, when it was clear to the leadership
that widespread criticism of the party and party cadres had gotten
out of hand, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was launched to suppress
all divergent thought and firmly reestablish orthodox ideology.
Writers who had answered the party's invitation to offer criticisms
and alternative solutions to China's problems were abruptly
silenced, and many were sent to reform camps or internal exile. By
the early 1960s, however, a few intellectuals within the party were
bold enough to again propose policy alternatives, within stringent
limits.
When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, party functionaries
assumed positions of leadership at most research institutes and
universities, and many schools were closed or converted to
"soldiers', workers', and peasants' universities." Intellectuals,
denounced as the "stinking ninth category," either were purged or
had their work heavily edited for political "purity", which
severely hampered most serious research and scholarship.
Following the fall of Lin Biao, Minister of National Defense
and Mao's heir apparent, in 1971, the atmosphere for intellectuals
began to improve. Under the aegis of Zhou Enlai and later Deng
Xiaoping, many intellectuals were restored to their former
positions and warily resumed their pre-Cultural Revolution duties.
In January 1975 Zhou Enlai set out his ambitious
Four Modernizations (see Glossary)
program and solicited the support of
China's intellectuals in turning China into a modern industrialized
nation by the end of the century
(see The Cultural Revolution Decade, 1966-76;
The Post-Mao Period, 1976-78
, ch. 1).
Data as of July 1987
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