1952 reorganization of higher education in China

[1][2][3] This policy focused more on engineering education and technical training while removing American influences among Chinese scholars.

[7] 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.

Running public universities became a government responsibility while private education and self-funded students to study abroad were permitted and encouraged.

Religious proselytising became forbidden, while universities were required to teach Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, the state ideology.

The tightening of state control and pivot to engineering and science education continued and peaked in the early years of the subsequent Communist government.

The People's Government shall reform the old educational system, subject matter and teaching methods in a planned, systematic manner.

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.

[3] Eventually, the Chinese involvement in the Korean War in October changed the expectation of the government, which became less tolerant with intellectuals' noncooperation.

The US government first froze Chinese assets in the US and banned remittance from the US to China, which cut missionary universities funding sources.

Thus, on 29 September, Premier Zhou Enlai made a speech to university professors in Beijing and Tianjin, calling for thought reforms among them.

According to an article by Dr Ma published on the state media People's Daily on 23 October 1951, The faculty of Peking University maintained such a glorious revolutionary tradition that they were naturally willing to accept all new trends of thought.

In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to thoroughly restructure the faculties and departments, reform the curriculum, and improve the content and teaching methods in accordance with the needs of the country; and one of the main keys to achieving this goal is to make all the faculty and students of the university truly aware of the need for reform and to carry out ideological transformation consciously and voluntarily so that we ourselves can better serve the people.

Although Peking University has carried out some reform work in the past two years or so, these achievements are still far from our ideal in terms of the needs of the country and our mission.

We will also respond to Premier Zhou's call to strengthen our ideological reform and to match our operational level with new tasks.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.

[23] To implement the reorganisation, the Ministry of Higher Education was formed and headed by Ma Xulun in the fall of 1952, upon Fomin's advice.

On 19 July 1952, the State Council decided to introduce centralised job allocation system to ensure each university graduate to acquire lifetime tenure.

On 21 July 1952, the Ministry of Education issued an instruction, which emphasised that unified university admissions was key to the national plan for cadre training.

The universities were placed under the national economic plans, while the courses which was set to 215 narrowly defined specialisations, which grew to 323 in 1957 in response to manpower need.

"[20] One of the reasons for the reorganisation was geographic imbalance of higher education, which gravitated in major cities in coastal China, such as Beijing and Shanghai.

During the reorganisation, relocation of the faculty, student bodies and the facilities occurred not only across higher education institutions but also across geographic regions.

The campus of Cheeloo University was taken up by the newly founded Shandong Medical College.As all private education in China was ordered to close in 1952, Christian colleges and universities were therefore forced to shut down, with teachers and students fleeing mainland China to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia to continue providing Christian education to Chinese people.

[30] Tsinghua University was a main target of the reorganisation in North China,[37] due to its historical tie with the United States.

The Thought Reform campaign starting in the fall of 1950 disabused university faculty members of any possibility of their ideas of the education being accepted by the new government.

Thus, Mao Zedong launched the Hundred Flowers campaign to allow intellectuals to express their criticism towards the Communist policies, during which university professors spoke out against the reorganisation.

Meanwhile, Mao ordered higher education institutions and democratic parties to organise talks in which they were allowed to express their criticism.

[20] In Nanjing University, a university-wide meeting was held in June 1957 to criticise so-called rightist thoughts, which mostly echoed the nationwide debates.

The notion of the bureaucracy, sectarianism and subjectivism as a result of the current social institution, the advocacy of university autonomy rather than the Party leadership, the appeal for redefining political campaigns as anti-human rights cases, and the discontent with the 1952 higher education reorganisation all came under criticism.

In Beijing, the municipal committee of the Communist Party claimed that there were 4874 rightists founded in 32 higher education institutions.

For example, Chen Jianren, the Party secretary of Nanjing University, was also recognised as a rightist and removed from his office, due to his opposition to the movement and was tortured to death in 1967.

[40] Although John Dewey actually shared the belief in the unity of theory and practice with Karl Marx, the Communist government attempted to remove his influence in China.