In China, the 1952 reorganization of higher education institutions () was a national policy under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which came into power in 1949, to adopt Soviet-styled higher education. This policy focused more on engineering education and technical training while removing American influences among Chinese scholars. While eliminating private education, especially missionary higher education, the policy led to the state control over the higher education sector and the loss of faculty governance tradition since the 1920s. This served the Communist agenda to break up the prestigious universities established under the Republic of China, to weaken the historical ties between the university and the faculty, and to establish the political and organisational authority of the new Communist government over the higher education system. The reorganisation involved most of the higher education institutions in mainland China and influenced the basic structure of Chinese higher education today.
Background
Establishment of modern higher education
The history of higher education in China dates back to the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC– c. 1045 BC). However, the education system in ancient China was highly elitist and centred around Confucianism, a form of humanism. Under the imperial examination system, the education system focused on training and selection of civil servants. When China was defeated by Britain in the Opium War (1839–1842), liberal intellectuals in China began to reflect on Western knowledge and technology, which stimulated reforms towards modern education systems. Missionary schools, which were founded and run by Christian missionaries, set an example for such reforms. The Self-Strengthening Movement and the subsequent Hundred Days' Reform in the 1890s gave birth to first modern universities in China, during which the advocates of westernisation in China founded Beiyang and Nanyang Public Schools, and the reformist government founded Imperial University of Beijing. Western academics, such as astrometry, geography, foreign languages, and mathematics, were gradually added and emphasised in the Chinese education systems, which used to teach students only about how to write eight-legged essays tailored for imperial examinations.
As the Nationalists, later known as Kuomintang (KMT), overthrew the Chinese monarchy and established a republic in the 1911 Revolution, the Nationalists and liberal intellectuals listed education and industrialisation as two priorities of the new republic. Running public universities became a government responsibility while private education and self-funded students to study abroad were permitted and encouraged. Influenced by the theory of John Dewey, Cai Yuanpei, the first Minister of Education of the new republic, believed that education should aim for growing intelligence of mind, personal traits that contribute to culture and society, democratic mobility and educational growth. He planned to put the education under autonomous, non-partisan, non-state organisations of educators, which contradicted the ideology of Nationalists, leading to a failure of Cai's reform plan. With a number of different education systems tried and abandoned, the government eventually introduced one that modelled after the United States education system.
Despite the reforms, the stress on politics, law and humanities continued in the education system, suggesting that people continued to consider education as a way to get into civil service. As the Nationalists regained control over the government in 1928, it started to exert more influence over the education system. All higher education institutions were required to register and be certified by the Ministry of Education. Religious proselytising became forbidden, while universities were required to teach Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, the state ideology. In addition, it established a network of national universities and managed to get more students enrolled in engineering and basic science programmes to meet the need of national development. The tightening of state control and pivot to engineering and science education continued and peaked in the early years of the subsequent Communist government.
Civil war, Communist rule and Korean War
At the time of the 1927 split-up between the Communists and Nationalists, Mao Zedong, who became the Communist leader in 1935, served as the acting minister of publicity and education within the Nationalists, responsible for training farmers to be revolutionaries. After the split-up, the Communists began to provide Soviet-styled public education in Ruijin and other areas under its control, during which the Communist education system focused on training Communist cadres, political and cultural education for the young people and literacy education for the general public. As the escalating Japanese invasion and the Nationalist policy of appeasement in the 1930s, caused discontent among university faculty and students, hyperinflation and the pervasive corruption further eroded people's support for the Nationalist government, leading to protests and demonstrations, which were responded with brutal suppression. Meanwhile, the Communist call for resistance and the United Front policy successfully attracted and recruited patriotic students. After Xi'an Incident in 1937, the Communist Party became recognised as a legal party within the Republic of China and provided public education in Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region. During the time, the education system under Communist rule focused on political education and mobilisation among the people, which deeply influenced the Communist policy on education in the 1950s. The universities in Communist-controlled areas were not universities in a normal sense, as they typically aimed to teach Communist cadres about the Party's current policies, as well as the revolutionary history in China and in the West. But it provided a possible model for the university reorganisation after 1949.
With the Communist victory in the civil war in 1949, the new government vowed to build a "national, scientific, popular education", planning to replace the old education system, taught content and pedagogy. At first, the government promised to protect private education and took a gradual approach for the transformation in its first national meeting with education sectors in January 1950, as the Communists were clear that the universities were where they could get support from. Nevertheless, intellectuals at the universities were mostly influenced by American education and culture, and despite dissent towards the Nationalist government, they were also cautious about the Communists, holding a "wait-and-see" attitude. Eventually, the Chinese involvement in the Korean War in October changed the expectation of the government, which became less tolerant with intellectuals' noncooperation. As the war damaged the diplomatic relations between the United States and the Communists, the Communist government began to remove foreign influences from its education system. Therefore, the government reversed its advocacy for private education, and nationalised missionary universities subsidised by American funds. Especially, Mao quoted and criticised "the democratic individualism of China" from the US State Secretary Dean Acheson's China White Paper, from which Mao sensed the danger of pro-American intellectuals rooted within Chinese society.
Prelude
Strengthening state control In the First National Education Work Conference in December 1949, the government proposed its three key policies. First, higher education must serve national construction, especially economic construction. Second, higher education should be open to workers and peasants and they should be tuition-free at national universities. Third, higher education must transit into a planned economy. In particular, the Communist government stressed the ideological basis of the education, which differed education in the People's Republic from that in the past. As Ma Xulun said in the closing remark,
As the three policies outlined the ideological basis of the upcoming education reform, in July 1950, the State Council further announced that universities must obey any order from the Ministry of Education, which, along with the fast expansion of Communist organisations within the universities, allowing the implementation of government orders in the Chinese universities.
Nationalisation of private education
The Chinese intervention in the Korean War in late 1950 interrupted the plan for graduation transformation of the Chinese higher education system. The US government first froze Chinese assets in the US and banned remittance from the US to China, which cut missionary universities funding sources. With the Chinese government's order to nationalise missionary higher education in China, by the end of 1951, Fu Jen Catholic University, Yenching University, Tsin Ku University, Peking Union Medical College, Oberlin Shansi Memorial School, the University of Nanking, Ginling College, Fukien Christian University, Hwa Nan College, Huachung University, the Boone Library School and West China Union University had been transformed into public universities, while Soochow University, Cheeloo University, St John's University, Hangchow University, the University of Shanghai, Aurora University, Aurora College for Women, Lingnan University and Qiujing Business School were handed over to the Chinese yet remained private. In addition to the transformation of Christian higher education, private Great China University and Kwang Hua University were merged and formed into a new public university known as East China Normal University in 1951.
Thought reforms among intellectuals
Despite the government's ownership and administrative control over the universities, most Chinese universities hired professors with American backgrounds and taught in an American way. Thus, on 29 September, Premier Zhou Enlai made a speech to university professors in Beijing and Tianjin, calling for thought reforms among them. This was soon echoed by Dr Ma Yinchu, who was just appointed as the president of Peking University. According to an article by Dr Ma published by the state media People's Daily on 23 October 1951,
While the Though Reform was by and large a spontaneous movement and initiated by the intellectuals themselves, in February 1952, the Communist Party further launched the Three-Anti Movement, leading to a nationwide criticism towards the ideology of bourgeoisie. The movement used political power to force intellectuals and scholars to change their ideology. As Ma Xulun, the Minister of Education, said,
The two political campaigns eventually took ideological control of the cultural and education sectors, taming the intellectuals and suppressing dissidents. By the fall of 1952, around 91% of the faculty and 80% of the students passed the thought reform. The People's Daily, when addressing the university reorganisation plan in 1952, explained that "a serious ideological view of worshiping the Anglo-American bourgeoisie, sectarianism, nativism, and individualism" was removed by the thought reforms, which enabled the reorganisation of higher education.
Socialist models of modern university