What is unemployment in China? For 20 years after the Great Leap Forward was officially credited with having achieved full employment in 1958, this question could not even be raised in the People's Republic of China. From the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and up to 1958 unemployment problems had been prominently featured in the Chinese press. In 1978 unemployment again became a topic of discussion. The reappearance of unemployment as an acceptable subject of debate was a further indication of how much of Maoist ideology had been officially discarded since the death of Mao Zedong two years earlier. One Chinese summed up these changes as they related to employment problems in this way2: Employment is a major economic as well as a major social problem. But from 1958 until the destruction of the “gang of four,” problems of employment virtually constituted a taboo which could not be discussed in public. After the smashing of the “gang of four” and especially after the third plenary session of the 11th Party Congress (December 1978), a new employment policy was decided on. This was a strategic decision of immense significance.

“Living standards have improved, but levels are low and not even.” These words are contained in an appraisal by two senior members of the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China, which seems to be the first detailed account in years, written for the benefit of foreigners who are interested in the well-being of the people of China. Other, briefer statements have been available lately, but none of such authenticity. In this respect, December 1978 can be taken as the point of departure: since then, not only have major political and economic changes occurred, but the non-Chinese world has been allowed to participate in these changes and to take account of their successes and failures. Even the language in which official reports are made astonishes. Admittedly, reforms had preceded the third plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party held in December 1978. The plenum was the occasion when China's policies underwent a dramatic shift from Hua Guofeng's doctrinal concept to a more “pragmatic” approach, with problems being tackled as they arose. Strategy and tactics were revised, following a re-evaluation of major political events, organizational change at the highest political level, a reassessment of Mao's role in the history of the People's Republic and the revision of economic targets. A stable future seemed to be guaranteed by the election of Hu Yaobang to the Politbureau and – a little later – the appointment of Zhao Ziyang as premier in overall charge of modernization, as Deng Xiaoping interpreted this concept. Within a few months Hua Guofeng's modernization projects suffered some drastic amendments and his 10-year Plan in particular was abandoned. In its place, the plenum considered the “eight-character charter” of readjustment, reform, consolidation and improvement. In the countryside, which still provides work and a home for the largest number of men and women, agriculture was given the highest priority - but this time in earnest and not, as during the previous two decades, merely as a slogan.

From 1955 onwards Mao Zedong developed a philosophical justification for his explosive interventions in Chinese politics by grounding his concepts in a peculiar Einsteinian epistemology. In retrospect, it is likely that already in the May Fourth period Mao Zedong understood the epistemological significance of the Einsteinian revolution in a peculiarly optimistic manner.

Opportunities to revisit a remote field site studied many years before are relatively rare in anthropology generally, but when the location happens to be China, we simply do not expect them to occur. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable that the village of Kaixiangong, first presented to the scholarly world in Fei Xiaotong's Peasant Life in China, should have been further described by William R. Geddes in 1955 and by Fei himself after a 1957 visit. When invited by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to visit China in the summer of 1981 to undertake a scientific study of my choice, I was intrigued when Professor Fei suggested I request permission to go to Kaixiangong, and delighted when it was granted. I stayed in the community four days and nights during September, and the following is based on information gathered then.

China's Marriage Law of 1980 went into effect on New Year's Day 1981, permitting women and men to marry at 20 and 22, respectively. This contrasts sharply with the late marriage requirements of the 1970s, whichstipulated 23 and 25 years for women and men in the rural areas and 25 and 28 years for their urban sisters and brothers. The new legal minimum ages for marriage caused an instant upsurge in the numbers of young people getting married in China. One scholar estimated that as many as 30 million marriages would take place in 1981 as millions of young women and men took advantage of the new legal minimum. It was later officially projected that first marriages in 1981 would probably reach at least 14 million, more than twice the number in 1980. And, because of the “baby boom” of the 1960s marriage rates are likely to remain high through the mid 1990s.

On 1 September 1982, 1,545 delegates and 145 alternates convened the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The meeting was announced in advance (at the seventh plenum of the 11th Central Committee, held in Beijing 4–10 August) and proceeded with well-rehearsed smoothness to its scheduled adjournment 15 days later. The meeting agenda conformed closely to established protocol, consisting of speeches and work reports, discussion and adoption of a new Party constitution, culminating in the election of new members to the Central Committee and other “standing” (i.e. permanently tenured) positions and convention of the first plenary meetings of these organs. The meeting began on 1 September with a relatively brief opening speech by Deng Xiaoping, the presiding chairman (though in a typical gesture to collective leadership there were no less than nine other presiding chairmen), and was followed by Hu Yaobang's comprehensive report and by speeches or reports by Ye Jianying, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and others. These documents were all published as part of a general effort at greater publicity that included prior announcement of the dates of convention and adjournment, invitation of more than 70 responsible persons from democratic parties, non-Party patriots and other well-known personages from various circles to attend as observers (as had been done previously during the Eighth Congress), fairly detailed reporting of the election of deputies, their assembly and daily activities, arrangements and so forth, and even a sort of press conference that Zhu Muzhi, spokesman of the conference, held for Chinese and foreign reporters – although no foreign Communist Party members or foreign journalists were permitted to attend the Congress itself.

This paper will examine changes in seven aspects of higher education policy in the People's Republic of China during the 1970s and, based on the experience of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist states, will explore the implications of these changes for the structuring of social inequality in contemporary Chinese society.

During April and May 1981, at the invitation of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and with the help of a British Council travel grant, I visited educational institutions at all levels in Beijing and in the provinces of Anhui, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong to discuss the changes in educational policy since the fall of the “gang of four” in 1976. In addition to visiting schools, colleges and universities I was given extensive interviews with leading officials at the Ministry of Education in Beijing and at the Education Bureaus of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong.