China Briefing, 1988 by Anthony J. Kane

Author:Anthony J. Kane [Kane, Anthony J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social & Cultural Studies, General, Political Science, International, Social Science, History, Asia, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780429710094
Google: tkCYMgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 15305596
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Understanding Chinese Students in the 1980s

By almost any standard of measurement, Chinese students in the 1980s are different from their counterparts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The differences can be seen both in their attitudes and in their actual behavior. Ideologically, as well as practically, the CCP in post-Mao China has lost a fair measure of control over Chinese youth. As we shall see, efforts have been made—particularly in the wake of the demonstrations—to remedy this.

Perhaps the most obvious indicator of the decline in the CCP's influence on Chinese campuses is Party membership figures.6 In the mid- to late 1950s, around 8-10 percent of China's undergraduates in Shanghai were CCP members. A renewed emphasis on academics over politics had lowered the figure to 4.8 percent in 1962, but compare this to the figures at Shanghai's top universities at the end of 1983: Fudan, 0.56 percent; East China Normal, 0.35 percent; and Shanghai University of Science and Technology (SUST), 0.3 percent. Moreover, among freshmen and sophomores—who, according to interviewees, made up the bulk of the demonstrators—Fudan had seven Party members, East China Normal had one, and SUST had none. An internal report from the Ministry of Education in 1983 contrasted the situation with that on the eve of the Cultural Revolution by saying that things were so bad that:

. . . in a few schools there is not a single student who has applied to join the party. Moreover, the school's party and youth league committees have not placed this issue on the agenda. ... At Beijing Normal University, where student party members made up 12.5 percent in the first half of 1966, the number is down to 2 percent. At Qinghua University the equivalent figures have gone from 13 percent to 1.9 percent. At other schools the numbers are lower. ... At many colleges and universities the percentage of student party members is the lowest since the founding of the People's Republic of China . . . and in some schools with long histories there are fewer student party members now than the number of underground party members there in the pre-Liberation period.7

The impasse in recruitment work was reflective of a generation gap pitting contemporary youth, holding 1980s values, against conservative Party members, still seeking the ideal youth of the 1950s. The problem came from two directions. On the one hand, in the course of modernization, the ideals of young people continue to evolve away from the traditional criteria associated with Party membership. As a number of surveys show, professional or academic success is given top priority by young people, who calculate that early Party membership may constrain the pursuit of more material goals. At the same time, they realize that they are more likely to become the objects of Party courtship after they achieve academic or professional success.

While youth have been delaying their decision to seek membership, local Party leaders at the grass-roots level are reluctant to absorb the "new youth" into the Party; some cadres have argued

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