1. The first two campaigns in the criticism of the “gang of four” had concentrated on exposure of the corrupt life styles and plots to usurp Party and state power of the “gang of four.”

2. Hongqi, No. 12 (1977)Google Scholar. See also Peking Review, 16 December 1977, and 3 February 1978. The Hongqi article states that the “two estimates” were formulated in 1971 by Chi Qun on behalf of the “gang of four,” despite Mao's positive assessment of the intellectuals in the summer of 1971. The article said that Mao's line had in fact held the dominant position in education throughout the 28 years since Liberation.

3. The Cultural Revolution leadership of Beida – Wang Lianlong, Wei Yinqiu, Guo Zonglin and Li Bainian – took over in July 1968, as officers in charge of the “People's Liberation Army (PLA) Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team.” They were all removed from office (along with Chi Qun and Xie Jingyi, both from 8341 Unit of the PLA and who had been in charge of Qinghua University) just after the fall of the “gang of four.” There then followed an interim leadership under Huang Xinbai, which was in turn replaced in November 1977 by the present leadership of Zhou Lin, Gao Tie and Wei Ming. Zhou Peiyuan, an eminent physicist, became vice-chancellor.

4. Zhou's, speech was published in the news-sheet Xin Beida, 14 11 1977Google Scholar.

5. The third campaign at Beida was to be expressed in the slogan “three thoroughs and one criticism” (san chedi yi henpi): exposure of the “gang of four's” attempts to seize Party and state power, investigation into persons and waits involved with the “gang of four,” exposure of the “gang of four's” counter-revolutionary and revisionist line, and criticism of the mass criticism group “Liang Xiao.”

6. Most criticisms were directed against the Literature and History Departments and the Beida pharmaceutical factory. Posters were put up at the centre of campus, where in late 1975 posters had been put up criticizing the then minister of Education, Zhou Rongxin and Deng Xiaoping: see Zweig, David S., “The Pelta debate on education and the Fall of Teng Hsiao-p'ing,” The China Quarterly, No. 73 (03 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. For details of the new enrolment system, see Renmin ribao, 21 October 1977. See also, “New college enrolment system,” Peking Review, No. 46, 1977Google Scholar.

8. For descriptions of the worker-peasant-soldier student enrolment system, made at the time of its introduction, see “The wishes of workers, peasants and soldiers in their hundreds of millions have come true! – Hailing the workers, peasants and soldiers entering the new-type socialist universities,” Peking Review, 30 September 1970. For specific reference to the situation at Beida, , see “Taking all society as their factory – Peking University's achievements in educational revolution in the liberal arts,” Peking Review, 2 02 1973Google Scholar. For a critique of the educational system at Beida and Qinghua University prior to the Cultural Revolution, see “Chronology of 17 years of the two-line struggle on the educational front” in Chinese Education (Spring 1968).

9. Some 5·7 million students sat the college entrance examinations in 1977, of whom 278,000 were selected and enrolled. Summary of World Broadcasts, Part III – The Far East, FE/5800.

10. “Comrade Mao Yuan-hsin's talks at the on-the-spot conference for learning the experience of revolution in education of Chaoyang agricultural college in liaoning,” Issues and Studies, September 1976, p. 114. My thanks to Jenny Louie of Nanjing University for pointing out this reference. In this speech of 23 December 1974, Mao Yuanxin gives a vivid description of his personal experiences of the pre-Cultural Revolution educational system, as well as a lengthy justification for the worker-peasant-soldier educational system. As background, see Mao's, “Talks with Mao Yuan-hsin (1964–66),” in Schram, Stuart (ed.) Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1974), p. 248Google Scholar. For denunciation of Tiesheng, Zhang, see Peking Review, No. 8, 1977Google Scholar. The State Council Instructed in April 1973 that, under the new system of enrolling students from amongst outstanding workers, peasants and soldiers with at least two years of practical experience through the recommendation of the masses, consideration of the candidate's political qualities should come first, but there should also be a small examination to ascertain the candidate's educational level. The “fan huichao” opposition of 1973 to the re-introduction of examinations is now interpreted as having been an attack on Premier Zhou.

11. Many of the new students acknowledged that the poem had been excessively provocative towards the worker-peasant-soldier students, but they still held that, in expressing support for the new enrolment system; its basic-orientation had been correct.

12. The first group of worker-peasant-soldier students, to graduate after the fall of the “gang of four” were allocated jobs in August 1977. The worker-peasant-soldier students maintained that the controversy had a national significance but, according to one poster, Party Secretary Zhou Lin and Politburo member Fang Yi looked at posters on 12 March and determined that it was only a local debate.

13. This is a reference to one of Chairman Mao's last directives, in which Mao said “metaphysics is rampant” (xingerskangxue charigjue). This directive is now interpreted as a criticism directed at the “gang of four.”

14. A few days after this poster was written, Deng Xiaoping said that science should be considered as part of the productive forces, and intellectuals and scientists as mental labourers. This gave the new students further legitimation for regarding themselves as members of the working class.

15. The most frequently quoted of Mao's sayings on education: “Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture,” comes from his 1957 article “On the correct handling of contradictions among the people.”

16. The Shanghai Machine Tools Plant provided the prototype for these “July 21st Universities” now run by many factories; it formally established a July 21st University two months after Mao's directive of 21st July 1968 that colleges of science and engineering should “take the road of the Shanghai Machine Tools Plant in training technicians from among the workers,” see Chen, Theodore Hsi-enThe Maoist Educational Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 141–42Google Scholar. Since the early 1960s, the Shanghai Machine Tools Plant had been selecting students from amongst its workers on the basis of advanced political consciousness and production experience, through recommendation by the masses and authorization by the Party Committee. Technical studies were combined with the study of military affairs in army units, and of farming in people's communes. An even earlier form for combining work and study, applied in the countryside, was that of the Communist Labour Universities. It was decided at the National Conference on Educational Work in April 1978 to upgrade the status of July 21st Universities (SWB, FE/5795). July 21st Universities are now also starting to enrol students on the basis of performance in examinations.

17. In the official repudiation of the “two estimates” in late 1977, Mao's call to “walk on two legs” in education of 1958 was interpreted as meaning that both ordinary and “worker-peasant” schools should be run at the same time (i.e. not just the latter). See “Criticizing the two estimates,” Peking Review, 3 February 1978.

18. See “Running key schools well,” Peking Review, No. 8, 1978Google Scholar. The article jays that the “gang of four” accused the system of “key schools” (which was abolished during the Cultural Revolution) of training “revisionist buds and intellectual aristocrats,” and of providing “bourgeois education for geniuses.” See also SWB, FE/5812 (13 May 1978); 88 “key” or “pilot” universities and colleges were set up by the middle of 1978.

19. The following statistics were given in “Jiaoyu zhanxian de yi chang da hznzhan,” Hongqi, No. 12, 1977Google Scholar, concerning the class origins of college and university students of just prior to the Cultural Revolution:

from worker or peasant families – 64·6%

from exploiting class families – 9·4%

20. It was admitted by Mao Yuanxin, in his speech of 23 December 1974 (pp. 118 and 121) that “opening back doors” did go on under the worker-peasant-soldier student enrolment policy. It seems, however, that the new enrolment system has not managed to put an end to “back door” corruption. Renmin ribao (12 December 1978) said that new forms of “opening back doors” had arisen under the new system. Discontented students held a demonstration outside the Beijing municipal headquarters in the middle of September 1979, protesting about having been denied university places despite passing the entrance examinations, and claiming that children of high officials had been corruptly admitted through the “back door” (The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, 21 September 1979).

21. Peking Review, No. 10, 10 03 1978Google Scholar. In his Report, Hua said that the present college graduates “should be enabled to put what they have learned to good use and further efforts should be made to train'them and raise their level,” and that the worker-peasant-soldier students -trained in recent years were a “new force in our contingent of intellectuals and should be given every care and assistance to grow and mature.”

22. Ah Dou was the son of Liu Bei in the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” and was famed for his stupidity.

23. The classical phrase “awareness of one's own limitations” (ren yao you zi zhi zhi ming, sometimes translated as “people should know themselves”) is often associated with Mao's letter to Jiang Qing of July 1966, in which Mao expressed suspicions about Lin Biao.

24. Nie Yuanzi has been connected with high political circles since the 1950s. She is said to have been married to the Party secretary of Haerbin, and her brother Nie Zhen was vice-Party secretary of People's University in Beijing. She was employed as a teacher in the Philosophy Department of Beida, and from 1961 to 1962: held the position of acting Party branch secretary in the Department. From 1964 to 1965 she was involved in a struggle with members of the official workteam which was sent into Beida to carry out the Socialist Education Movement (see Nee, VictorThe Cultural Revolution at Peking University (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar). Following enthusiastic praise by Mao of her wall poster at Beida of 25 May 1966 [“China's first Marxist-Leninist big character poster” … “the manifesto of the Chinese Paris Commune of the sixties of the twentieth century …”: see Schram, Mao Tse-tung, Unrehearsed, p. 253Google Scholar, and Mao Zedong sixiang wansui (1969), p. 648], she rose rapidly to become the most famous of the “Big Five” Red Guard leaders of Beijing [wu da xuesheng lingxiu: Nie Yuanzi (Beida), Kuai Dafu (Qinghua), Han Aijing (Beijing Aeronautical Institute), Tan Houlan (Beijing Normal College), Wang Dabin (Geological Institute)]. In July 1968, the “Big Five” were called to a meeting with Mao and the Cultural Revolution Group where they were severely censured for their part in the spread of factional fighting and armed1 struggle, and large-scale intervention by the PLA quickly brought Red Guard activity to a halt. Nie Yuanzi's official posts included: chairman of the New Beida Cultural Revolution Committee (end of 1966), chairman of the Beijing Red Guard Congress (February 1967), vice-chairman of the Beijing Revolutionary Committee (April 1967) and alternate member of the Party Central Committee (April 1969). She is now in her mid-50s.

25. Sun Pengyi was a young teacher in the Philosophy Department until the Cultural Revolution, when he became second-in-command of Nie Yuanzi's Red Guard faction (the New Beida Commune Red Guards). He had been a work-team cadre in the countryside during the Socialist Education Movement. Like Nie, he was criticized in 1968 by the Workers' and PLA Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team, and he subsequently dropped from the limelight altogether. Wang, Wei, Guo and Li comprised the Cultural Revolution leadership of Beida (from July 1968).

26. SWB, FE/5837.

27. SWB, FE/5833, FE/5834, FE/5843; see esp. FE/5852. The. “two blows” (shuang da) movement, with its exposure of Red Guard “thuggery” and other criminal activities, complemented the demands for a proper legal system which were being expressed in the national press around the same time. The main places where the “two blows” movement was to be carried out were the provincial organs, and institutes of higher education (SWB, FE/5841).

28. See SWB, FE/5841, FE/5843 and FE/5846.

29. For Deng's speech at the conference, see Peking Review, 5 May 1978; for Liu Xiyao's speech, see SWB, FE/5843.

30. “San da chabie” – the three major distinctions, between town and country, industry and agricultural, physical and mental labour. Apparently, fierce opposition had also been expressed towards the new system of “key schools”; critics of “key schools” said that they involved taking the revisionist road, conducting education for geniuses and preaching that intellectual knowledge comes first (SWB, FE/5843).

31. The “two blows” movement was also carried out at Nanjing University, slightly later than at Beida, with the two Nanjing Red Guard leaders Zeng Bangyuan and Zhou Wenchang being criticized at “criticism-struggle meetings” in June and October. Foreign students were invited to attend both of these meetings. For guidelines on the scale of the “two blows” movement and the criteria to be used in dealing with individuals, see SWB, FE/5841.

32. This was not the first time that Nie Yuanzi had been made the target of a campaign of vilification. The special case group (zhuan an zu) of the Jing Gang Shan Red Guards of Beida (the faction opposed to Nie's) in 1967 compiled a dossier of unpleasant facts about Nie. They claimed that her husband, the Party Secretary of Harbin, had been denounced as a “Rightist” in 1957 and that she had divorced him; her next husband, an aged member of the Central Committee's Commission for the Inspection of Discipline (Zhongyarig jilu jiancha weiyuarihui) was also branded as a renegade; worst of all, they claimed that her brother Nie Zhen was married to an ex-wife of Liu Shaoqi.

33. The Party slogan guiding rehabilitations at this time was “carry out the Party's policy on cadres and intellectuals” (luoshi dang de ganbu he zhishifenzi zhengce). From November 1978 onwards, the slogan used was “mistakes must be rectified” (you cuo bi zheng), marking the transition to more wholesale and top-level rehabilitations.

34. These extortive practices (known as bi-gong-xin), described as having occurred in nearly all cases raised, were condemned by Mao in the 1969 New Year's Day editorial of Renmin ribao.

35. Nie stated at a rally in Shanghai on 22 November 1966: “The case of Chang Xiping is not an isolated phenomenon. It is intimately connected with two sources of authority: one is the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee under Mayor Ts'ao Ti-ch'iu, the other is the secretary-general of the Party, Teng Hsiao p'ing.” See Hunter, NealeShanghai Journal: An Eyewitness Account of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 154Google Scholar.

36. See Schram, Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, p. 256Google Scholar: “Speech at a meeting with regional secretaries and members of the Cultural Revolutionary Group of the Central Committee, 22 July 1966,” for Mao's criticisms of the obstructive tactics of the work-teams.

37. The “June 18 Incident” at Beida involved the public criticism and humiliation of the University Party Committee, the work-team, and many teachers and cadres. Liu Shaoqi publicized it immediately afterwards as an example which was not to be repeated; Jiang Qing, however, claimed that Chairman Mao regarded this incident as being a revolutionary one [see Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, pp. 259, 341, n. 5; see also Current Background (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 892, p. 39Google Scholar]. See also Beijing ribao, 19 January 1979.

38. Chang Xiping served as deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the Socialist Education Movement work-team at Beida from November 1964 to June 1965 (SWB, FE/5852). The Party secretary of the work-team was Zhang Panshi, then also the deputy minister of the Party Central Committee Propaganda Department. (See Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University, p. 44Google Scholar, fn. oh Zhang Panshi). The “Peach Garden experience” derived from a social investigation conducted by Wang Guangmei, the wife of Liu Shaoqi.

39. Mao and Liu issued a series of conflicting directives during the Socialist Education Movement, Liu refused to accept Mao's “23 articles” when they were put forward in January 1965 [Schram, Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, p. 345, text 21Google Scholar; n. 1. See Baum, Richard and Teiwes, Frederick C.Ssu-Ch'ing: Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966 (Berkeley: University of California, 1968), p. 120Google Scholar, for text of the “23 articles”], and had proposed a much more radical policy than Mao for the rectification of cadres during the Socialist Education Movement, in his “later 10 articles” and in the “Peach Garden experience.” (Neale Hunter, in Shanghai Journal, points out that Liu greatly consolidated his power-base by way of the appointments of cadres made by the Socialist Education Movement work-teams in factories and villages.)

40. Peng Zhen was rehabilitated in February 1979, and is now in charge of the Legal Commission. Liu Shaoqi was rehabilitated in March 1980.

41. A form of punishment whereby the arms are held up behind, the back, making a V-shape, with the head pushed down towards the knees.

42. Jian Bozan published articles in the early 1960s opposing the tendency, in historical research of using the methodology of class analysis as a simple formula instead of making concrete analysis of people and events. He stressed the need to combine the class approach with that of historicism (lishizhuyi). Qi Benyu criticized Jian Bozan on four main counts: opposing the theory of class struggle, denigrating peasant revolutions, praising emperors and kings and applauding conciliatory policies. Jian Bozan had already been criticized by Mao at the end of 1965 (see “Speech at Hangchow,” Schram, Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, p. 234Google Scholar; see also pp. 256 and 268 for further comments by Mao on Jian Bozan).

43. See SWB, FE/5843, FE/5834, FE/5835, FE/5852 and FE/5812.

44. Renmin ribao, 3 September 1978; the article did not refer to the worker-peasant-soldier students or to Nie Yuanzi.

45. See Guanyu qingli jieji duiwu de cailiao huibian (Yunnan, September 1968, S reprinted by Centre for Chinese Research Materials, No. 10), and “Investigation report on cleaning up the class ranks in Shanghai, Peking etc.” Current Background, No. 864.

46. Reference was made in this article to “wrong, false and unjust cases” (cuo, jia yuan an). The use of this phrase soon became general, in connexion with the move towards wholesale rehabilitation of those denounced during the Cultural Revolution. A major step towards an official repudiation of the Cultural Revolution was taken with the publication on 15 November 1978 of an article attacking Yao Wenyuan's criticism of the play “Hai Rui Dismissed from Office.” Yao's criticism of the play, which was published in November 1965 and marked the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, was now described as having been written as part of a conspiracy plotted by Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao. All the other “black articles” written by Yao Wenyuan had already been criticized, and it was now said to be time to remove this “foundation stone” of the “gang of four.”

47. Renmin ribao, 16 November 1978. Perhaps delaying the “two blows” movement in Beijing had been one of the ways in which Wu De had held back criticism of the “gang of four,” as he was indirectly accused of having done in Renmin ribao following his replacement by Lin Hujia.

48. SWB, 30 December 1978. The Daily Telegraph reported that calls were made at this meeting for the death sentence to be passed on all five Red Guard leaders. See Zheng Ming (Hong Kong), 12 1978Google Scholar, for a further discussion of the political implications of the criticism of the Red Guard leaders.

49. See Beijing ribao of 19 January 1979.

50. The issue of the evaluation of Mao acquired critical importance in the light of the reversal of the official assessment of the Tian An Men Incident, the rehabilitation of the “rightists,” and the rehabilitation of Peng Dehuai, and surfaced with a vengeance during the Democracy Movement at the end of 1978.