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China's Returned Scholars and the Democracy Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Ruth Hayhoe
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A People's.Daily editorial of 24 August 1989 heralding the early return of students to university campuses, blamed the events of May-June 1989 on students's lack of appreciation of “national essence!” (guoqing) and the fact that bourgeois liberal ideas from the west had flooded in to fill an ideological vacuum created by the lack of serious attention to education in Marxist-Leninist thought on Chinese campuses in recent years. In a long speech given before a national higher education meeting in mid July and published on 30 August, Li Tieying, head of the State Education Commission, specifically linked bourgeois liberalism and what he called “democratic individualism” with “certain courses in the social sciences” that had uncritically introduced bourgeois social theories. The suggested solution to the problem was to strengthen Party leadership on university campuses and reassert political education and education in patriotism and national identity.

The actual response has been much harsher than that. Regular undergraduate enrolments for autumn 1989 were cut from a planned 640,000 to 610,000, with these cuts mainly affecting social science and humanities specializations and national comprehensive universities directly under the State Education Commission. It was these universities which pioneered new work in the social sciences over the past decade, and many of their students took a leading part in the democratic movement. There is thus little subtlety in the attack now being made upon them. To give some specific examples, Fudan's enrolment was cut from a planned 2,000 to 1,200, Nankai's from a planned 1,200 to 800 and Beida's from a planned 2,000 to 800.

Type
Research Note
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 122 , June 1990 , pp. 293 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1990

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References

1 Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 24 August 1989.

2 Zhongguo jiaoyu bao, 30 August 1989.

3 China News Analysis, No. 1390 (July 1989), p. 6.

4 China Daily, 15 September 1989.

5 Hayhoe, Ruth, China's Universities and the Open Door (New York: M. E. Sharpe and Toronoto: OISE Press, 1989).Google Scholar

6 Huning, Wang, “Heading for an efficient and democratic political structure,” in Shijie jingji daobao, 21 July 1986, trans, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service- Daily Report, No. 151 (6 August 1989), p. K5.Google Scholar

7 Faculty of China Textile University did not participate in either the interviews or questionnaire survey. However, faculty from Tongji University, which was not included in the original plan, did take part in the questionnaire survey.

8 China Exchange News, Vol. 17, Nos. 3 and 4, September and December 1989.

9 Department of Planning, Ministry of Education (ed.),Achievement of Educaton in China: Statistics 1949–1983 (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1984), p. 106; Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji nianjian 1988 (Beijing: Beijing gonxue daxue chubanshe, 1988), p. 20.

10 Our statistical tables were originally in the form of time series from 1978 to 1988, which clearly show an increasing female participation from about 1984−85 in most cases.

11 For a lengthier discussion of these issues, see Hayhoe, Ruth, “Knowledge categories and Chinese educational reform,”Interchange, Vol. 19, Nos. 3−4 (autumn 1988), pp. 96–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For a more exensive discussion of national policy on study abroad, see sOrleans, Leo A.,Chinese Students in America: Policies, Issues and Numbers (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and Ruth Hayhoe,China's Universities and the Open Door, pp. 53−57.

13 China Daily, 2 September 1989.

14 Hayhoe, R., “China's intellectuals in the world community,” Higher Education, Vol. 17, No. 1(February 1988), pp. 121–38;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHayhoe, R. and Philips, Margaret, “International academic relations: some reflections on universities as cultural institutions in the world community,”Higher Education in Europe, Vol. XIV, No. 1(1989), pp. 59–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar