Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (40 page)

Return of the University Entrance Exam

A crucial issue for Deng and for everyone else in China regarding the quality of education was the revival of the university entrance examinations. Long before Deng returned to work, he believed that students should be selected for the better educational institutions not on the basis of “proper class background” and “proper political thinking” (Mao's criteria), but on the basis of academic merit, as determined by competitive entrance examinations. During the 1950s, children had been tested in school, but the results were played down since officials did not want to embarrass the children of peasants and workers who had scored poorly in comparison to the children of landlords and the bourgeoisie, who had benefited from better educational opportunities before 1949.

As some universities began to reopen in the early 1970s on a small scale, they accepted young people from the “proper classes”—workers, peasants, and soldiers—based not on exam scores but on recommendations from members of their work units. It was too blatant, of course, to recommend one's one own children, but one official could write a recommendation for another's child and then the favor could be returned. Even students from “good class backgrounds” who did well on the examinations were upset when others with better connections and lesser ability were admitted in their stead. The system of recommendations had become thoroughly corrupt.

Deng, arguing that class background was no longer an issue since the bourgeois and landlord classes no longer existed, felt strongly that the sooner entrance examinations were reintroduced at every level from elementary school through higher education, the sooner China's leadership could start improving education. Deng especially wanted to restore the “unified entrance examinations for institutions of higher learning” that had been terminated during the Cultural Revolution. But by the opening session of the Forum on Science and Education on August 3, 1977, plans were already under way for universities to reopen that fall and to enroll students based on recommendations. Would it be possible to introduce entrance examinations in just a few weeks, before the fall semester began? When the issue came up at the forum, Deng turned to Minister of Education Liu Xiyao and asked him if he thought it were possible. From the moment Minister Liu responded yes, Deng was prepared to move heaven and earth to hold the university entrance examinations in 1977. Indeed, before the forum ended, Deng announced, “We will end the system of recommendations, and will accept applications directly
from high school. This is a good way to begin producing people of talent more quickly and to achieve results faster.”
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Accomplishing such a huge turnaround in such a brief time frame would not be easy. Deciding which subjects would be tested, selecting faculty to prepare the content of the tests, announcing the examination plans, holding the examinations for millions, organizing and completing the grading, and determining which universities would be reopened and how many students they would take was a staggering task. Inevitably, universities opened some months later than expected, and not everything went smoothly, but they did reopen.

The Higher Education Enrollment Commission had never convened twice in the same year—until 1977. On August 13, within a week after Deng issued his decision, the Second All-China Higher Education Enrollment Work Conference was convened to plan for the fall enrollments. At this work conference, Deng explained further one of his policy changes: “In the past … I too stressed the advantages of having secondary school students do physical labor for two years after graduation. Facts have shown, however, that after a couple of years of labor, the students have forgotten half of what they learned at school. This is a waste of time.”
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He directed that 20 to 30 percent of those accepted to university that year would be admitted directly from high school, and that in the future most students would be admitted that way. Respect for labor could be taught to students without interrupting their education. Deng also gave his official order for unified entrance exams to be held in 1977, which some officials complained would be difficult or even impossible to accomplish so soon. Impatient, Deng countered that the policy was set. The examinations would be held in 1977. There would be no changes.
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A summary document was prepared on the basis of the conference, discussed and approved by the Politburo on October 5, ratified by the State Council on October 12, and published in the
People's Daily
on October 21, with directions to students on how to sign up for the exam.
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Some 5,780,000 people who had reached college age within the last decade, many of whom were still working in the countryside, took the test that fall, but there were then only 273,000 slots at the universities. In 1977 and 1978, then, only some 5.8 percent of those who took the examinations could actually be enrolled.
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For the first time since the Communists ruled China, class background was not a factor in selecting those to be admitted to university. Enrollment was entirely based on merit as measured by examination scores.

It was a strain for the universities to prepare for the students, even by the end of the year when they finally opened. Worker propaganda teams still quartered at the universities had to be moved out. University facilities in disrepair had to be patched up. Teachers, who for years had not been allowed to devote themselves to professional activities, had to put together their curricula and prepare teaching materials for their courses. The first students on the scene complained that at the hastily revamped universities, both the living conditions and academic experience left something to be desired. They were, as some students themselves phrased it, “students of the 1980s using texts of the 1970s, taught by faculty from the 1960s.”

The system Deng introduced in 1977 has continued ever since, creating a cascade of positive results for China. As in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, Chinese university entrance examinations raised the quality of both university applicants and recruits entering the workforce.
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In particular, after entrance examinations were introduced at all levels, ambitious parents began preparing their one child (since urban families were allowed to have only one child) in math, science, and foreign languages so they could be admitted to a top elementary school, a top secondary school, and a top university. Primary and secondary schools, too, began preparing their students to take examinations as they moved up the educational ladder, and universities began preparing some of their ablest students to go on to higher education in the West.

Those who were left behind—the lost generations of youth sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution who did not pass the examinations, and those who scored only high enough to attend ordinary schools rather than the select top schools—were not necessarily happy with the new system. But many of those who passed the examinations, as well as those who care about quality of education—including parents, faculty, and employers—remain enormously grateful to Deng Xiaoping for hastening the return of entrance examinations and for his decisive support of quality education.

Promoting Science

Soon after he returned to work in 1977, Deng said, “I have a persistent feeling that at present things are not going well in science and education.”
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Despite Hu Yaobang's yeoman efforts in 1975, many intellectuals had not been allowed to return to useful work, and conflicts between scientists criticized
for their bourgeois lifestyles and their young rebel accusers remained intense. For the scientists, as for university faculty, living conditions remained terrible.

Scientific researchers were almost exclusively doing their work at research institutes, and worker propaganda teams and troops that had been sent to the universities during the Cultural Revolution to support the left and to criticize “bourgeois intellectuals” still occupied the campuses and gave directions to scientists. Deng found the situation untenable. He stated that “the problems with the worker propaganda teams must be settled. They and the troops sent in to support the left should all be withdrawn. There will be no exceptions.”
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Deng also responded to the continuing complaints of scientists that their professional work should be directed by someone familiar with the content. He directed that scientific institutes be reorganized with three top leaders at each institute. The party leader would manage overall policy, but the basic work of the institute would be under the direction of a leader trained in science. A third leader would be in charge of “rear services,” with responsibility for improving the living conditions and for ensuring that the scientists had adequate supplies to carry on their work. Aware that intellectuals were upset that they still had to spend so much time engaged in physical labor and political education, Deng established a new rule that at least five-sixths of the scientists' work week was to be spent on basic research.

Because the State Science and Technology Commission had been abolished more than a decade earlier, in 1977 there was still no overall administrative structure to oversee science. Which fields were to receive priority? How would people be trained to meet the needs of various fields? In 1975 Deng had relied on a small group within the Chinese Academy of Sciences to draft documents for the development of science. But now, in 1977, Deng directed that the State Science and Technology Commission be reestablished to coordinate developments in science and to draw up a seven-year science plan to replace the portions of the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1980–1985) devoted to science. The documents that Deng had directed to be drawn up in 1975—and had been dubbed by radicals as “three poisonous weeds”—were dusted off, and the work completed in 1975 provided a basis for the new plans.

Deng may have started with 1975 plans, but his dreams for China had grown in the intervening years. Deng believed that China's increased contact with the outside world, compared to that in 1975, meant that planners could and should set higher goals for the development of science. To guide his ambitious
new strategy, Deng continued to make good use of advice from outstanding Chinese-American scientists and to work closely with Fang Yi, the Politburo member with overall responsibility for science. Fang Yi and the Science and Technology Commission were put in charge of guiding the development of science in industry, in the military, and in other sectors, but they focused primarily on basic research conducted within universities and independent scientific institutes, particularly the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the newly established Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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Although Deng was more focused on the natural sciences than the social sciences, he believed that the social sciences, including economics, philosophy, Marxist theory, and knowledge of different societies, were also necessary to guide modernization. In May 1977 Hua had approved the plan, developed under Deng's direction in 1975, to establish an independent Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). By the time it came into being in the fall of 1977 with some two thousand members, Deng had returned and he arranged that its first head be Hu Qiaomu who had outlined the plans for its development in 1975. CASS acquired the status of an independent ministry directly under the State Council.
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Its independence from the Ministry of Education enabled it to be relatively free of pressures to impart propaganda and allowed scholars to concentrate on research rather than the more routine task of passing on the current state of knowledge.

Tentative plans for the new seven-year plan for scientific development, to include some 108 major projects, were presented to a large conference held from March 18–31, 1978. In his opening address, Deng said that science and technology were a “force of production”—the same comment that had got him into trouble with Mao in late 1975 for regarding science as important as the class struggle. He continued by drawing on what he had learned from the Chinese-American scientists. He announced that the world was experiencing nothing short of a revolution in science and technology, with entirely new fields opening up: polymers, nuclear energy, electronic computers, semiconductors, astronautics, and lasers. In a move typical for Deng, he then reassured and reminded his Marxist-leaning audience that labor power has always included knowledge of science and technology, and that scientific developments were universal and could be used by all of mankind. Deng acknowledged that some scientists would be needed for applied fields like engineering, which would foster advances in such areas as industrial automation. But Deng's focus was on science, and he again stressed the need to learn from advanced science abroad.
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Deng's speech reflects the juggling act that Deng needed to perform, fighting political battles while working with specialists to develop concrete plans for development of the field. Even as he supervised the selection of projects and the plans for specific institutes, he had to continue to struggle against the perceptions of the old Maoist leadership; he argued that science was important enough to be considered a force of production, that mental labor would be regarded as labor, and that scientists would be allowed to devote themselves to their professional work without distractions from political activities. Although he did not use the words, his answer to the old debate about which is more important, red or expert, was definitely “expert.” He was ready to fight the political battles to allow the experts to pursue what was most important to realize the four modernizations.