The Chinese Communist Party's Takeover, Transformation And Adjustment Of Universities In Beijing (1948-1952)

At the end of 1948,prior to the liberation of the the city of Peking,Culture Takeover Committee which is the subordinate of PLA had successfully taken over Tsinghua University and Yanjing University and later took over Peking University and Peking Normal University.Culture takeover committee first eradicated the remnants of the Kuomintang and the Three People's Principles youth league,abolished the Kuomintang party-righteousness curriculum and discipline education system,also set up school committees in each school to manage the school administration.As for the church colleges and private universities,the culture takeover committee insists on the principle of maintaining the status quo and providing financial support only.Afterwards,the culture takeover committee established a political class system in all schools to provide a revolutionary ideological and political education for teachers and students.The committee also arrange for them to participate in the land reform movement to deeply understand Chinese revolution and the Chinese Communist Party in practice.Finally,the committee streamlined the curriculum of the universities in Peping,and added Marxist-Leninist theory and the theory of the new-democratic revolution as compulsory courses.The intellectual ideological reform campaign is a topic that cannot be relied upon in the study of the reform of higher education in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.Most of the teachers of many universities in Beijing had studied in the western countries,and were deeply influenced by western bourgeois values.They had misunderstood the Chinese revolution and the Communist Party of China,also has illusions about the western countries headed by the United States,and has misunderstood the Soviet socialist camp.From 1950 to 1952,a series of campaigns aimed at transforming and educating the general public has been carried out,including the ideological reform campaign,the Three Antis Campaign,the clean-up of the middle-level sports,and the loyal and honest campaign.Although there have been overly aggressive behaviors such as going online,student struggled against the teachers etc.These movements have fundamentally broken the ideology of admiring America and fear of America among university teachers,and established the idea of education serving the people,also laying the ideological foundation for the adjustment of colleges and universities afterwards.The take-over and reform of Beijing higher education by CCP fundamentally changed the organizational structure of Beijing's higher education.The rulings on personnel rights and major issues of universities and colleges are unified under the supervision of the Ministry of Education.All departments of colleges and universities implement collective leadership system and set up management committees respectively.With the destruction of big landlords and big bourgeoisie on the mainland,church schools and private colleges begin to lack students,coupled with the deterioration of Sino-US relations after the outbreak of the Korean War.As a consequence,Yanjing,Fu Jen and other church colleges and a large number of private universities were all changed to public,and there were no private colleges in Beijing.Meanwhile,the Communist Party and Youth League Organization began to change from underground to ground,and began to made themselves public.As the improvement of teachers and students' consciousness,they became more enthusiastic about joining the party and league,so the Party and Youth League organizations ushered in a great development.Throughout the takeover and reform of Beijing higher education by the CCP,the adjustments of university departments between 1951 and 1952 could be viewed as the climax of the reform.Whether the extent of coverage or adjustment range,both of them were rare in the world higher education history.Adjustments of Beijing university departments were based on Soviet Union higher education model,and it completely reconstructed college departments,courses,and teaching of universities in Beijing.The campaign could be divided into two major stages by the year 1952.At the beginning of the liberation of Beijing,the adjustment of departments and schools was relatively slow,and the adjustments in 1952 were the climax.In just a few months,colleges and departments in almost all universities in Beijing have been re-disrupted and reintegrated.As a result,the number of comprehensive university seen sharp drop,and a number of science and technology universities and polytechnic colleges have been established.The famous “eight colleges” is example.Furthermore,as new-established universities,the organizational structure characteristics of Renmin University of China and the Central University for Nationalities are worthy of study.The takeover and reform of higer education will inevitably involve the curriculum reform.Curriculum reform made by Culture takeover committee was based on the order of the first political courses,second professional courses,first social sciences major and second science and enineering major.Universities cut out lots of inappropriate courses and added some courses similar to Soviet Union universities courses.But copy the difficult Soviet textbooks also increased teachers and students' burden.In teaching,Beijing universities imitated Soviet style.Under the department,there are majors,and under the major,there are several teaching and research groups,which were regarded as the basic teaching unit.The teaching plans should be made before lectures,which were in accordance with the Soviet syllabus.Teachers translated and adopted a large number of Soviet textbooks.Moreover,under the influence of the Soviet Union model,higher education in our country has become more “uniform and uniform,” and as small as the teaching plan,syllabus,and even the increase or decrease of the curriculum,all must be decided by the Ministry of Higher Education.All of the universities began to use a unified syllabus.Beijing universities have also started to recruit students uniformly,allocating jobs uniformly,which greatly reduced college autonomy.The advantage of the Soviet model is to highlight the combination of theory and practice in the curriculum and to emphasize the practicality of knowledge.In addition,with the proposal of the policy of higher education opening to workers and peasants,we have imitated the Soviet Union model,also started a large number of instant high schools for workers and peasants.The takeover and reform of Beijing higher education by the CCP had greatly changed the living conditions of teachers and students.They participated in the southward working group,the summer study group,the cadre training class,and the youth school with great enthusiasm,and improved their awareness and consciousness.They also realized that the workers' and peasants' graciousness and the ugliness of the exploiting class and eliminated the previous misunderstandings through participating in the land reform.After the outbreak of Korean War,teachers and students devoted themselves to the propaganda against the United States and aiding the DPRK.They went into the contryside and used various forms to promote to the masses,also donated money and materials to the front line.Some students even directly requested military participation and dedicated themselves to everything,which reflected their courage to serve the country.To some extent,the reform of the higher education in Beijing by the Chinese Communist Party is a process in which Beijing's higher education is gradually transformed from the Western style to the Soviet style.As won the revolution for a short time,the CCP lacked the experience of building socialism,so learning the experience of the Soviet Union is the best way to achieve results in the short term.However,during our studies,we did not connect to our national conditions very well,and the combination between Soviet Union experience and China's actual condition is not good enough.We made some mistakes,which prominently reflected in the phenomenon of copying Soviet experience.In ideological transformation of intellectuals and adjustments of colleges,we adopted “campaign-style governance”,and there have been simple and brutal phenomena such as “one size fits all”.However,we cannot obliterate the great achievements of the higher education reform in Beijing.The scale of universities and colleges has been expanded,and the cultivated talents are more in line with the needs of the society.Workers and peasants have also been able to receive higher education,which had improved their cultural standards.The education provided enormous talent guarantees for China's socialist construction.They also laid the foundation for the future development of higher education.