A Research Into The Thought History Of The Contemporary Chinese College Students (1949-1988)

Institutions of higher learning are the home of different trends of thoughts, with which the college students, one of the most active social strata, often make the earliest contact. It is on this account that the research into the thought evolution of the college students plays a provoking role in the study on the mainstream thought of a society and its influences on a society. Moreover, the study of college students' trends of thought helps master the developmental law, and hence is of great practical and directive significance to the improvement of the ideological and political work, to the creation and reservation of a long period of peace and stability, and to the guarantee of the society to develop according to our will and wishes.The 150,000-word dissertation follows this guiding principle and divides its scope into six parts, namely, the introduction, the four-chapter body, and the conclusion.The introductory chapter describes the necessity, significance, state of research, available reference material, methodology, scope of research, value of research, and the writer's originality.The first chapter of the body deals with the establishment of socialist thought in college students in the seven years since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Early after the new country was established, college students demonstrated their doubt, suspicion and ignorance towards socialism, communism, and the new system. After the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-1953), the agrarian reform, and the Movement to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950-1952), the college students came to realize the great strength and importance of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese people, and they tend to accept the new social system. From 1951 to 1955, college students went through three such movements in the academic field as the criticism of the film WuXun Zhnan, the removal of Hu Shi's capitalist idealism and the criticism of Hu Feng's trend of thought in literature and art, and they made such great progress as to accept the test of the proletarian materialism. In the meanwhile, the Party conducted other movements such as the higher education reform and the purification of the intellectuals' ideology. These measures were of considerable effect, because the college students began to arm their mind with Marxism and adopt the revolutionary outlook of serving the people all life. The 1956 national conference of the intellectuals, which demonstrated a positive approval of the important role in the socialist construction of intellectuals with the inclusion of the college students, symbolized the establishment of socialism among the college students.The second chapter of the body deals with the twists and turns of the college students' thought on the way to socialism from 1956 to 1966. In 1956 and 1957, the Party called on the people to follow "the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend," and to "march towards science and technology," the college students listened to the call and drowned themselves in hard and diligent study. In the following year, with the start of the rectification movement in 1957, a vast majority of the students showed their opposition to bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism, and expressed their views and opinions on the way to socialist construction. Shortly afterwards, the opposition to the right deviation ascended to the climax, and the college students were highly unified to "the proletarian stand". With the escalation of the opposition to the right deviation, they took an active part in the "redness-expertise" debate, and concluded that they should become the working-class intellectuals that were "both socialist-winded and professionally expert". In 1958, the Great Leap Forward movement spread to the educational circle, and the college students involved themselves in the debates over the reformin education. They posed challenges against their own teachers, revised the teaching plan and syllabus, and busied themselves in making steel and running factories, hence turning to the road to armchair politics that overlooked practice. In the mid-1960 's, the Party and its chairman Mao Zedong, based upon the delicate international affairs and the domestic problems in constructing socialism, called on the institutions of higher learning to highlight class struggles and turn out competent proletarian successors. The college students therefore received a severe test of the class struggles in the country in the "four clean-ups" movement, a movement to purify politics, economy, organization and ideology from 1963 to 1966.The third chapter of the body elaborates the complicated ideological changes that the college students experienced in the decade from 1966 to 1976. With the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the college students, driven by the fanatic enthusiasm in politics, followed the examples of the historical heroes and took the radical lead early in the Cultural Revolution. They insisted that "rebelliousness be reasonable", and gradually lost their rationality and reasonability in their fanatic imitation of the historical figures. In the middle of the Cultural Revolution, the college students, after their personal involvement in the political activities, seemed to realize that what they pursuied was something unreal and illusory. They began to feel bored and puzzled at that time when the Lin Biao Incident brought them another sudden gust of embarrassment and confusion. The severe criticism thrown upon Lin Biao and the later rectification movement enabled the students to realize the great harms of the left deviation and helped regain their rationality and reasonability. In the ending period of the Cultural Revolution, the college students came to be cool-minded and clear-headed, and they demonstrated their awakening and disillusionment when they mourn for Premier Zhou Enlai in 1976. This consciousness in politics and ideology and the struggle and fight for justice indicated the ending of the prolonged turbulence of the Cultural Revolution.The last chapter of the body illustrates the college students' reevaluation of socialism under the new circumstances of the Chinese reform and opening policy to the outside world from 1976 to 1988. After the Cultural Revolution, China entered a new historical period, during which time the Chinese higher education displayed a vigorous revival out of the previous state of turbulence and paralysis. The college students showed an active and heartfelt response to the Party's call to expose and criticize the Gang of Four, to debate on the criteria of truth, and to free and liberate the mind. From 1980 on, China entered a new era of transformation, when the college students, encouraged by the achievements of the reform policies, showed great concern and expectation about the nation's future. The college students also devoted an increasing concern about their own role and participation in politics and domestic affairs. But at the same time, the introduction of science, technology and philosophy of thought from the west also impinged on the outlooks on the world, life and values of the college students who began to reevaluate socialism to a greater depth and from wider perspectives. This reevaluation, arising out of the collision between the sharply different oriental and occidental ideologies, was without any doubt flexuous. On the one hand, there existed a blindfold longing for the western election model and democracies, but on the other hand, the college students, in the great care of the government and the Party, and with the guidance of Marxism, came to interpret outlook, humanism, alienation from the socialist perspective. In the mid-1980's, the college students fell into a chaos of distress and puzzlement, and they seriously worried and fluctuated, because of the penetration of western trends of thought, the increasing problems and contradictions in the process of the domestic reform, and most...