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China Rehabilitation and Rethinking, 1977-84
The Cultural Revolution's attacks on science and its
deprecation of expertise were opposed by those within the
government and party who were more concerned with economic
development than with revolutionary purity. In the early 1970s,
Premier Zhou Enlai and his associate Deng Xiaoping attempted to
improve the working conditions of scientists and to promote
research. At the January 1975 session of the Fourth National
People's Congress, Zhou Enlai defined China's goal for the rest of
the century as the
Four Modernizations (see Glossary),
that is,
modernization of agriculture, industry, science and technology, and
national defense. Although the policies proposed in the speech had
little immediate effect, they were to become the basic guide for
the post-Mao period. In 1975 Deng Xiaoping, then vice chairman of
the Chinese Communist Party, vice premier of the government, and
Zhou Enlai's political heir, acted as patron and spokesman for
China's scientists
(see Constitutional Framework
, ch. 10). Under
Deng's direction, three major policy documents--on science and
technology, industry, and foreign trade--were drafted. Intended to
promote economic growth, they called for rehabilitating scientists
and experts, reimposing strict academic standards in education, and
importing foreign technology. The proposals for reversing most of
the Cultural Revolution policies toward scientists and
intellectuals were denounced by the ideologues and followers of the
Gang of Four (see Glossary)
as "poisonous weeds." Zhou died in
January 1976, and Deng was dismissed from all his posts in April.
Deng's stress on the priority of scientific and technical
development was condemned by the radicals as "taking the capitalist
road." This dispute demonstrated the central place of science
policy in modern Chinese politics and the link between science
policies and the political fortunes of individual leaders.
Some of the immediate consequences of Mao's death and the
subsequent overthrow of the Gang of Four in October 1976 were the
reversals of science and education policies
(see The Post-Mao Period, 1976-78
, ch. 1). During 1977 the more vocal supporters of
the Gang of Four were removed from positions of authority in
research institutes and universities and replaced with
professionally qualified scientists and intellectuals. Academic and
research institutions that had been closed were reopened, and
scientists were summoned back to their laboratories from manual
labor in the countryside. Scientific journals resumed publication,
often carrying reports of research completed before everything
stopped in the summer of 1966. The media devoted much attention to
the value of science and the admirable qualities of scientists. It
denounced the repressive and anti-intellectual policies of the
deposed Gang of Four, who were blamed for the failure of China's
science and technology to match advanced international levels. The
news media now characterized scientists and technicians as part of
society's "productive forces" and as "workers" rather than as
potential counterrevolutionaries or bourgeois experts divorced from
the masses. Considerable publicity went to the admission or
readmission of scientists to party membership.
The March 1978 National Science Conference in Beijing was a
milestone in science policy. The conference, called by the party
Central Committee, was attended by many of China's top leaders, as
well as by 6,000 scientists and science administrators. Its main
purpose was to announce publicly the government and party policy of
encouragement and support of science and technology. Science and
technology were assigned a key role in China's "New Long March"
toward the creation of a modern socialist society by the year 2000.
A major speech by Deng Xiaoping reiterated the concept of science
as a productive force and scientists as workers, an ideological
formulation intended to remove the grounds for the political
victimization of scientists. Speeches by then-Premier Hua Guofeng
and Vice Premier Fang Yi, the top government figure involved in
science and technology, urged that scientists be given free rein in
carrying out research as long as the work was in line with broad
national priorities. Basic research was to be supported, although
stress would continue to be placed on applied work, and China's
scientists would be given wide access to foreign knowledge through
greatly expanded international scientific and technical exchanges.
By 1978 substantial progress had been made toward restoring the
science and technology establishment to its pre-Cultural Revolution
state. Leaders with special responsibility for science and
technology joined recently rehabilitated senior scientists in
looking ahead and framing sweeping and very ambitious plans for
further development. The draft Eight-Year Plan for the Development
of Science and Technology, discussed at the 1978 National Science
Conference, called for a rapid increase in the number of research
workers, for catching up to advanced international levels by the
mid-1980s, and for substantial work in such fields as lasers,
manned space flight, and high-energy physics. For some scientists,
and perhaps for their political sponsors as well, mastering
technologies and developing Chinese capabilities in the most
advanced areas of science were goals in themselves, regardless of
the costs or of the likely benefits to the peasants and workers.
Both political leaders and media personnel seemed captivated by
the vision of rapid economic growth and social transformation made
possible by the wonders of science. Further, many leaders, not
themselves scientifically trained, tended toward unrealistic
expectations of the immediate benefits from research. This
attitude, while different from the hostility to science exhibited
during the Cultural Revolution, was based on a misunderstanding of
the nature of scientific work and was therefore a poor foundation
for science policy.
The plans for rapid advance in many scientific areas were
associated with equally ambitious calls for economic growth and the
large-scale import of complete factories. During 1979 it became
increasingly clear that China could not pay for all the imports or
scientific projects wanted by all the ministries, regional
authorities, and research institutes. It also became increasingly
evident that those promoting the projects had overlooked financial
constraints and severe shortages of scientific and technical
manpower and that they lacked a comprehensive plan. In February
1981 a report of the State Science and Technology Commission
reversed the overly ambitious 1978 eight-year scientific
development plan and called for renewed emphasis on the application
of science to practical problems and on training more scientists
and engineers.
As scientists and administrators confronted the problems of
applying and linking research with development, they became aware
of the constraints of the existing system and of the extent to
which the endemic difficulties in applying scientific knowledge
were consequences of the Soviet-style structure for science and
industry that China had uncritically adopted in the 1950s.
Attention shifted to reforming the existing system and promoting
greater efficiency and better use of scarce resources, such as
trained manpower. Between 1981 and 1985, a number of new journals
discussed China's scientific system and suggested improvements,
while national and local administrators sponsored a wide range of
experimental reforms and reorganizations of research bodies. The
extensive discussion and experimentation culminated in a March 1985
decision of the party Central Committee calling for thorough reform
of China's science system
(see The Reform Program
, this ch.).
Data as of July 1987
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