The Chinese scholar-official had long constituted a special type of iron-clad intelligentsia, firmly based on the Confucian tradition and accustomed to rule China with unchallenged authority. This tradition was threatened for the first time in 1838 with the outbreak of the "Opium" or First Anglo-Chinese War. Outwardly, this was a simple military defeat by a "barbarian" force on one frontier of China, remote from the capital and court at Peking. As such it was nothing new in Chinese history. Hsiung-nu, Toba Tartars, Mongols and Manchus had threatened and overrun Chinese borders through the centuries. To most articulate Chinese both this and successive assaults on China through the nineteenth century, were adequately explained by the traditional and reassuring formula.
The rapidly mounting Occidental pressure that China felt after 1800, and her evident need of new devices to meet it, faced the Chinese intellectual with hard decisions. His reactions become more understandable if we consider them in the context of his history – a context of which he was particularly aware, since his training and his approach to political problems were strongly historical. His position had not always been as secure as it seemed ostensibly in 1800; his outlook and even his identity had undergone several transformations before he arrived at the Confucian orthodoxy of the Manchu period. Two centuries after Confucius, the dominant thinkers were power-oriented Legalists, eclipsed by the Confucians only after permanently discrediting themselves through their brutally oppressive methods of unifying government and thought. After the 2nd century, Confucian ardor declined; intellectual leadership (and an important share of political influence) had passed to essentially anti-political Taoists and anti-worldly Buddhists. The Confucianists of the 10th and 11th centuries established their intellectual primacy and unchallenged political leadership only through an intense ideological struggle with these rivals.
The Chinese Communists (C's) need the services of the Chinese intellectuals & yet distrust them as products of bourgeois society. Since 1949, the regime has adopted various measures to reform the intellectuals to make them acceptable & useful to the new C society. At first, comparatively mild forms of `study' & pol'al indoctrination were used. Later, the intellectuals were asked to take part in various `revolutionary movements' & in `class struggle' in both countryside & city. By 1951 the pressure was intensified, & the intellectuals were organized to practice criticism & self-criticism & to make public confessions of past errors. Then, in an attempt to curb deviant ideas not compatible with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, the C's launched successive campaigns against bourgeois & other `unproletarian' thinking. A new trend in the treatment of the intellectuals 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 & frankly expressed their criticism of the C program, they were branded as `rightists' & attacked again. Since 1957 there has, been a further tightening of ideological controls on the mainland. AA.
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.
Of all intellectuals, the most highly respected and appreciated by Vietnamese society are the doctors. Indeed, it is hardly surprising that they should enjoy the esteem of a society the great majority of whose members are uneducated, impoverished, and beset by chronic disease and sickness. However, the reasons are twofold; medical degrees are academically superior to all others, and medicine, of all the professions, is the most useful on the purely practical plane. The doctors themselves are accorded the honorific title of "Thay," and the medical profession is popularly referred to by the descriptive phrase "savers of people and helpers of life." This is why, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Indo-Chinese Communist Party and the fifteenth anniversary of the Government of the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam, the "Doctor of Doctors," Ho Dac Di, who is Chairman of the North Vietnamese Medical Association as well as Director of the University and Specialist Colleges, was invited to make a speech. Here is what Dr. Ho Dac Di said on that occasion:The future of the intellectuals is a glorious one, because their activities bind them closely to the proletarian masses who are the masters of the world, the masters of their own country, the masters of their history, and masters of themselves…. On this, the thirtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Party, all those classes who work with their brains, and the scientists in particular, sincerely own their debt of gratitude to the Party and proclaim their complete confidence in the enlightened leadership of the Party, as well as in the glorious future of the fatherland. They give their firm promise that they, together with the other classes of the people, will protect the great achievements of the revolution.
This paper describes the landmarks of Western education in India, the content of this education, the nature of social and political changes which resulted or were furthered by this education, the groups that imparted and the groups that received this education, and finally it compares the Indian with the Chinese and to some extent with the Japanese experience.
As in all Asian countries, modernization in China was a result of Western impact. The year 1860 was a turning point in Chinese history. Prior to that year tradition reigned supreme, and all foreign nations were considered as distant uncivilized peoples whose best fortune lay in becoming vassals of the Middle Kingdom. A preliminary sign of change came in 1839–1842, when China suffered defeat in the Opium War with Great Britain. The defeat, humiliating as it was at the time, proved insufficient to shake China's inertia and was soon almost forgotten. The age of change had, however, arrived. Internal rebellion flashed up in the fifties. In addition, a new war with France and Britain started in 1856. In 1860, the emperor was a fugitive at Jehol; his summer palace was burned down by the invaders; a humiliating "unequal" treaty was concluded. The wound was too deep to be ignored, and the ground for reform was prepared.
The Russians have been & still are Europeans, just as other peoples who - like the Spaniards - have lived part of their history under foreign domination (in Russia's case, Tartar domination). Hence, the Russians differ from the Chinese as much as do other Europeans. This fact is illustrated by comparison of the Chinese & the Russians re their intellectual, spiritual, & emotional aspects. In some respects, the Russians are even remoter from the Chinese than other European peoples, because they have been molded by a particularly emotional form of Christianity which is very far removed from the matter-of-factness of Confucianism. In the field of soc org, the 2 main peculiarities of China - the power of the clan over its members, & the formation of the ruling elite by examinations - have no counterpart in the USSR. In turn, the slavelike position of the Russian peasant, & the power of the hereditary nobility around the czar, were unknown in China. The explanation for the victory of Communism in the 2 vastly diff countries is not to be found in a particular predisposition of the Chinese & the Russians to Communism, but in peculiar historical circumstances, forces, & personalities which operated in each country, largely as a result of the Western impact which hit both these huge, proud, gifted, & econ'ly backward nations. AA.
