Review: Asia: China's Intellectual Dilemma
| DOI | 10.1177/002070208103600422 |
| Author | William Saywell |
| Published date | 01 December 1981 |
| Date | 01 December 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS/ASIA
933
CHINA'S
INTELLECTUAL DILEMMA
Politics
and university
enrolment,
1949-1978
Robert
Taylor
Vancouver:
University
of
British Columbia,
1981,
xiv,
215pp,
$18.50
In
one
sense
this
book
is a
great
deal more
narrowly
focussed
than
the
title
may
suggest
to
some.
It
is
not
a
general
study
of
Chinese educa-
tion.
On the
other
hand,
it
is
a
great
deal
more wide-ranging
in
its
implications
than
the
subtitle
on
university
enrolment
might
suggest
to
others.
And
that
poses
the
reviewer's
dilemma.
The
book
is
too
spe-
cialized for
the
intelligent
reader
interested
in the
bird's
eye
view
of
either
Chinese
politics
or
education;
and
while
the
specialist
on
China
will
welcome
much
of its
data,
especially
the
statistics,
he will
find
the
political
interpretations
of
the
material
usually
obvious
and
un-
exciting.
University
enrolment
has been,
and
remains,
one
of
the
most
criti-
cal
and
controversial
political considerations
in
China.
Who enters
the
country's
universities,
by
whom
and
in
what
way
they are chosen,
from
what
regions
and
class
backgrounds
they
come,
and
what
qualifications
they
need,
all
these
considerations
have
been
at
the
very
heart
of
the
great
ideological
struggles
and
policy
reversals
in
education
that,
ever
since
1949,
have
characterized
the regime's
competing
thrusts
toward
economic
modernization and
Maoist
revolutionary utopianism.
Taylor
argues
that
the
ultimate
Maoist
aim
was
to
eliminate
the
dichotomy
between
education and
society
as
separate
entities.
Enrol-
ment
was
the
means to
that
end.
With
an
emphasis
on
part-time
study,
with
class
background
and
politics
as
the
major
criteria
for admission
to
higher
educational
institutions,
and with
productive
labour
and
politics
within
universities,
Mao's
aim
came
closest
to
realization
as
the universities
reopened
in
the
early
1970s.
But
even
in
that
and
other
radical
periods,
there
was
rapid
back-
sliding
and
early
signs
of
a
re-emergence of
academic
priorities
and
professional
6litism.
Indeed,
the
interpretation
that
emerges
from
Taylor's
study
suggests
that
the imperatives
of
modernization
and
economic
development
kept
pushing
academic
and
professional
cri-
teria
to
the
forefront
of
university
enrolment
policy, however
strong
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