ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the late Maoist development strategy sought to remake the superstructure of Chinese society. The cornerstone of this programme of superstructural change was to be a radical transformation of China’s system of education.1 The programme was radical in three senses. First, it aimed at a massive expansion of education in the countryside to provide the rural population with the same opportunities as urban citizens and in the process to expand the size of the educated workforce. Second, it sought to achieve a qualitative transformation of the educational system by incorporating work as well as study into the process. Third, the provision of basic education in urban areas was to be expanded so that the children of workers would have an opportunity to attend middle school. None of this was entirely new; similar experiments had occurred in the CCP base area in Yan’an in the 1940s and again during the Great Leap Forward. The distinguishing feature of late Maoism was the scale of the attempted transformation.
