Current Trends in the Reform of Higher Education in Communist China

Abstract

After the Chinese Communists launched their "Cultural Revolution," most of the "academic authorities," specialists, and professors in institutions of higher learning were criticized and severely condemned in struggle campaigns; the equipment, instruments, and facilities of these schools were sacrificed in armed struggles, the old educational system was destroyed, and the old teaching materials were denounced. For the last three years, therefore, higher education in Communist China has remained in a vacuum. It was not until the second half of 1968, when the Chinese Communist Party announced the policy that "the reform of science and engineering education must follow the road of the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant" and three other pilot programs, that a general outlook for the reform of higher education emerged.