The Thought Reform of Intellectuals

Abstract

The Chinese Communists need the services of the Chinese intellectuals and yet distrust them as products of bourgeois society. Since 1949, the regime has adopted various measures to reform the intellectuals to make them acceptable and useful to the new Communist society. At first, compara tively mild forms of "study" and political indoctrination were used. Later, the intellectuals were asked to take part in vari ous "revolutionary movements" and in "class struggle" in both countryside and city. By 1951 the pressure was intensified, and the intellectuals were organized to practice criticism and self-criticism and to make public confessions of past errors. Then, in an attempt to curb deviant ideas not compatible with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, the Communists launched successive campaigns against bourgeois and other "unprole tarian" thinking. A new trend in the treatment of the intel lectuals seemed to be appearing in 1956, when the intellectuals were offered new privileges, even a measure of freedom of thought. However, when the intellectuals took advantage of the liberalization and frankly expressed their criticism of the Communist program, they were branded as "rightists" and attacked again. Since 1957 there has been a further tighten ing of ideological controls on the mainland.