Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World

by Yong Zhao

  On the mainland, the Communist Party took control of the country, bundling Chinese imperial thinking into a Western ideology invented by a German, Karl Marx. The People's Republic of China came under the control of Mao Zedong, who had deep knowledge of Chinese tradition and learning but no direct experience with the West. Although he led multiple campaigns against the Confucian tradition, Mao was a devoted admirer of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who had unified China two thousand years before. He promoted historic Chinese rebels who changed dynasties and replaced emperors. In terms of his supremacy, Mao was no different from “a monarch in succession to scores of emperors” in China. In their book China: A New History, Fairbank and Goldman called him “an updated emperor.”11

  Under Mao's autocratic rule, China went back to being an empire closed off to the outside world. As in previous empires, maintaining control of the people was of paramount importance. Although technology and science were acknowledged to be necessary for economic development, they would be sacrificed if they became a threat to maintaining control. Seeing the destabilizing effect of Western ideas, Mao followed the conservative scholars of the late Qing dynasty and opposed anything foreign. “We'd rather have socialist weed than capitalist seedlings” was a popular slogan during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, meaning China would rather have socialist ignorance than capitalist knowledge. As a result, Western-educated intellectuals were considered “traitors” and had to be reeducated.12 Western books were banned, and listening to the Voice of America was considered a crime. People with overseas ties were put under surveillance as possible spies. “Foreign imperialism was ended but so were foreign stimuli, while old ‘feudal’ [traditional] values and corrupt practices remained still embedded in Chinese society.”13

  Self-Strengthening Movement Version 2.0

  Cut off from Western technology and science, Mao formed his own ideas of technological and scientific innovation—and they all proved disastrous. For example, in November 1957, he decided that China should surpass Britain, the United States, and other industrial countries in ten to fifteen years, and he believed that the amount of steel a nation produced was the correct measure of its strength. So to meet his goal, the Communist Party decided in 1958 that China should produce 10.7 million tons of steel and called on the whole country to participate. All of China was suddenly engaged in steelmaking. Millions of backyard iron smelters were set up all over the country—in cornfields, on hilltops, in courtyards, and literally in backyards. More than 100 million people—one in every six Chinese—took part in this campaign without possessing either the knowledge or the proper equipment necessary to make steel. In December 1958, after the melting of millions of cooking pots and other iron objects, China's government announced that the country had produced 11.08 tons of steel, exceeding its goal twelve days ahead of schedule. Alas, only 8 million tons of the steel were usable. The estimated damage was over 20 billion RMB, or about one-sixth of China's GDP in 1958.

  Mao's ideas about agriculture were even more damaging. To please the Great Leader and Helmsman and prove him correct, Chinese peasants entered into a national contest of grain production measured by the amount of grains harvested per mu (0.164 acres). The People's Daily, the national state-run newspaper, published a regularly updated league table of the best harvesting record. On June 8, 1958, a village in Henan reported harvesting 2,015 jin (about 2,216 pounds) of wheat per mu. This record was smashed a day later by a commune in Hubei with 2,357 jin (2,592 pounds). The record was broken every few days, and by the time the year ended, the top harvest had reached 8,585 jin (9,440 pounds). Although these numbers are perhaps one hundred times greater than what was actually harvested and violated both science and common sense, Mao and his loyal followers did not begin to doubt them until a few years later. Instead, Mao reportedly worried about what the peasants would do with so much food and suggested they have five meals a day. The reality, within a few years, was massive starvation.

  Mao died in 1976, just as China was about to collapse. His successors, led by Deng Xiaoping, decided that China indeed needed Western technology and science. Deng had traveled to France at the age of sixteen under a work-study program and stayed there for four years, until he was sent to the Soviet Union in 1926. When he returned to China and rose to leadership, he made massive changes under the slogan of “reform and opening up to the outside world.”

  The “reform,” as discussed in chapter 3, consisted mostly of granting more autonomy to China's citizens and withdrawing governmental control from their daily lives. The “opening up” meant reengaging with the outside world—mostly the West. A century earlier, China had been forced, by guns and cannons, to open its eyes to the West. This time, the opening was China's own decision. Not everyone was in favor, and only a leader with absolute authority could have made such a decision. It was Deng Xiaoping, China's de facto emperor at the time, who announced that China must end its isolation from the rest of the world.

  June 23, 1978, was a grand milestone on China's journey toward modernization, for on that day, Deng Xiaoping issued the decree to send Chinese to study overseas. At a meeting with the leadership of Tsinghua University (founded in 1911 to prepare students to study in US universities under the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program),14 Deng said, “I agree that we should send more people to study abroad, mostly in natural sciences. Let's send tens of thousands, instead of eight or ten…This is one of the important ways to rapidly improve our science and education in five years.”15 Deng asked the Ministry of Education to come up with a plan, adding, “Regardless of the costs, it's worth it.” What was even more remarkable was Deng's liberal view about management of the students. Officials at the Ministry of Education were understandably deeply worried that students might defect. But Deng told them not to isolate the students from their hosting society, because they should learn not only science and technology but also about foreign societies.

  Within two months, the Ministry of Education had a plan ready. In October, a Chinese delegation was dispatched to Washington, DC, to negotiate with the US government. The negotiations were not easy, since the two countries did not have a diplomatic relationship, but eventually it was agreed that the United States would accept between five hundred and seven hundred Chinese students and scholars, and the United States would send sixty students and scholars to China in 1978–1979. On December 26, 1978, just in time for the historic visit of Deng Xiaoping to the United States in January 1979, fifty-two Chinese students and scholars arrived in New York via Paris.

  At the same time, China began to bring in foreign experts and investment. Foreign machinery and technology were imported to help with modernization, and foreign companies were gradually allowed to enter China. The events of the late 1970s and early 1980s were much like the Self-Strengthening Movement one hundred years earlier—similar attempts to borrow and learn from the West, with the same goal of acquiring Western technology without Western culture. For example, to prevent potential contamination, foreigners were allowed to stay only in government-designated hotels or guarded houses and could not visit ordinary Chinese homes without proper authorization. Chinese had to obtain permission to interact with foreigners in private.

  History repeats itself: what had been impossible one hundred years earlier remained impossible. As China opened its door to Western technology and science, Western ideas streamed in. No matter how hard China's leaders worked to separate the Chinese from foreign people and ideas, Western values and lifestyles began to spread, and Western arts, music, and fashion found their way into Chinese society.

  Meanwhile, a few courageous intellectuals began to deliberately introduce Western ideas and knowledge about the West. In 1980, Zhong Shuhe, once imprisoned for liberal ideas during the Cultural Revolution, persuaded Hunan People's Press to republish writings of late Qing dynasty scholars and officials about Western countries. These writings came out as a series of books under the title From East to West: Chinese Travellers before 1911, bringing a
n old West to China through the eyes of liberal scholars. That series retained some shock value, but even more impact came from another collection of writings, Series into the Future. Conceived and organized by a group of young intellectuals (no one on the editorial board was over forty-five years old), this series focused on more contemporary development of both social and natural sciences. It included original writings of Chinese scholars and translated Western works such as Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and The Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Fashioned after the Bibliothèque Bleue during the French Enlightenment, the overarching goal of the series was to “help enlighten people, promote universal values, and modernize China in all aspects,” said its chief editor, Jing Guanta, in an interview twenty years later.16

  But like their counterparts one hundred years earlier, the conservatives of the late twentieth century resisted the influx of Western ideas and culture. They took action, launching a series of campaigns against the importation of Western ideas. In 1983, party conservatives began the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign to curb the spread of Western culture and ideas. Spiritual pollution was said to have many symptoms, and its contamination could be seen in works that promoted humanism: films, theater, music, and dance from the West (including Taiwan and Hong Kong); Western hairstyles (curly, colored, or, for men, long); Western clothing (e.g., jeans); and facial hair. The campaign was not popular; it reminded people a little too sharply of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping intervened, ending the campaign after two months.

  The resistance did not go away as easily. In early 1987, another campaign was launched against “bourgeois liberalization,” following a stern speech by the very leader who opened China to the world, Deng Xiaoping. “The purpose of implementing the open policies was to learn foreign technology and utilize foreign investments,” said Deng at a private meeting with top leaders of the Communist Party on December 30, 1986. “It is to improve socialist construction, but we cannot deviate from the socialist path…We talk about democracy, but we cannot copy capitalist democracy. We cannot have the three-branch government.” Deng brought America directly into the conversation: “I have always criticized American leaders and said they have three governments…Certainly the capitalist America can use this to trick other countries but their internal fights give them lots of problems. We cannot adopt this scheme.” In his speech, he called for the persecution of a few scientists and scholars for their liberal views.17

  Less than three weeks after Deng's speech, Hu Yaobang, who had held the top position of the Communist Party since 1982, was forced to resign as the party secretary general. The reason given was that he had not opposed bourgeois liberalization forcefully enough. Once again, the influx of Western ideas had led to the questioning of Chinese tradition and current authority figures.

  Although earlier attempts to introduce Western ideas had caused concerns and reactions from the conservative Communist leaders, the resistance campaigns were short and limited in scope. It took a popular TV documentary, with its direct and explicit negation of the value of Chinese tradition, to bring about harsh retaliation and a full crackdown. In 1988, the Chinese Central TV (CCTV) station, the state-run national TV network, broadcast a six-part documentary entitled River Elegy. The gist of the historical documentary was that China's ancient, land-based civilization was conducive to despotism and feudalism. As a result, the Chinese tended to accept authority, be inward looking, and lack an adventurous spirit—just the opposite of ocean-faring Europeans and Americans. The color yellow, a proud Chinese symbol for thousands of years, was cast as a symbol of backwardness, ignorance, and submission to tyranny. The three symbols of the Chinese civilization—the Yellow River, the dragon, and the Great Wall—were reinterpreted as symbols of tyranny and isolationism. Most damaging was the conclusion:

  This yellow land cannot teach us what true scientific spirit means.

  The tyrannical Yellow River cannot teach us what true democracy is.

  This yellow land and river can no longer support a rapidly growing population nor can it breed a new culture. It has lost its nutrition and energy.

  The Confucian culture may have some perfect magic in the past, but for thousands of years, it has not cultivated the entrepreneurial spirit a people should have, the legal order a country needs, or a renewal mechanism a culture must have. Instead, in its decline, the Confucian culture never stops destroying its best, killing its enlivening elements, and suffocating the nation's talents generation after generation.18

  The conclusion was that the Yellow River was dead (hence the film's title). For renewal, China had to look for ideas in Western culture—civilizations based on blue oceans.

  River Elegy became an instant national phenomenon. More than 200 million viewers watched the documentary, which became the hottest topic of conversation on college campuses, in offices, and at gatherings of intellectuals. Clubs, forums, and seminars were founded all over the country specifically to discuss this film. Its script was published in People's Daily and more than ten other newspapers, and four publishing houses printed the script as a monograph. CCTV set a precedent by broadcasting the film in prime time twice in two months. Zhao Ziyang, who succeeded Hu Yaobang as secretary general of the Communist Party was said to have given copies of the film to leaders of Singapore. The film also reached Japan and became popular among its intellectuals.

  River Elegy did not flow unnoticed past the conservatives of the Communist Party. Wang Zhen, a decorated Communist general who had joined the party at the age of fourteen back in 1927, led a campaign against the documentary. China's newly elected vice president was infuriated by the film, and he swiftly gathered like-minded comrades to publicly denounce it. In September 1988, Wang summoned the chief editor of People's Daily to his home and said angrily, “We cannot put up with this anymore.” On September 30, at a high-level meeting of the party, Wang made an emotional speech calling for action. On October 8, the Chinese government banned the film. It could no longer be shown in China, let alone exported to other countries.19

  But the worst was yet to come for River Elegy and its makers. After the government's crackdown on massive protests in Tiananmen Square, River Elegy was charged with planting the seed for the June 1989 student demonstration and serving as “a blueprint of a counter-revolution” to end Communist rule and bring in capitalist liberalization. Zhao Ziyang was sacked as party general secretary and put under house arrest for supporting capitalist liberation. As evidence, he was accused of ordering the making and national distribution of the film. But according to one of its primary authors, Su Xiaokang, the accusation was a complete fabrication. “I am a writer. I have no association with politics. I never met Bao Tong or Chen Yizhi, let alone Zhao Ziyang,” said Su in an interview with the Independent Chinese Pen Center, a nonprofit organization for Chinese authors in exile.20

  The lead authors of the film escaped punishment by either hiding in China or going into exile in the United States. The Chinese government organized a massive campaign to denounce the film in media and among intellectuals in the aftermath of the Tiananmen demonstration. Under the banner of antipeaceful evolution and against all-out Westernization, all liberal ideas were suppressed. Journals and newspapers that had published liberal ideas were shut down or had their editorial teams sacked. The once popular “enlightenment” series was banned and its publications discontinued. Their leading editors and authors were removed from their jobs or went into exile.

  The modern Self-Strengthening Movement ended just as the previous one had. Seeing the destabilizing power of Western ideas and the successive collapse of former Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990, the Chinese Communist Party decided that China had experienced too much reform. For the next three years, China would focus on cleaning up Western contamination.

  Harmony and Innovation

  By the time China started its modern decontamination project, the world had changed. The 1990s were very differen
t from the 1890s: China could not simply put itself back into isolation. Like it or not, the country had to continue its economic development. In January 1992, Deng Xiaoping came out of retirement and took a month-long trip. He visited some of the most important cities in the southern provinces, particularly Guangdong, the first major province to experiment with his reforms and engage with the outside world. Deng made a number of speeches reaffirming his vision of “reform and opening up.” Although retired, he retained a monarch's power. His speeches forced China's leader, Jiang Zemin, to restart economic reforms and engage with foreign countries.

  The next twenty years saw rapid economic growth and broader interactions with the West. In 2001, China became a member of the World Trade Organization, officially joining the global economy. Western things no longer look strange in China's landscape. McDonald's, KFC, and Coca-Cola are household names in China. Ford, General Motors, and Toyota cars clog Chinese streets. Western musicians perform in Chinese theaters and bars. In 2013, Celine Dion performed for the Chinese on CCTV's most celebrated program, Chinese Spring Festival Evening. Almost half of the Chinese people, about 600 million, now use the Internet. Foreigners are free to travel in China and can choose to stay anywhere they like; they can befriend—or marry—any Chinese. Nearly half a million Chinese students studied abroad in 2012, about 200,000 of them in America. In 2013, the Chinese are expected to make over 900 million overseas trips. New York University began to enroll students on its Shanghai campus in 2013, and many other universities are opening campuses in China.