ABSTRACT
Classroom relations among Chinese middle school students in the 1960s were a direct result of the tension between two contradictory, and seemingly irreconcilable, ideals. The Key to understanding the divergence between student relationships as the Party would have preferred them to be and as they actually were is the notion of individual performance and its somewhat amorphous character. In the early 1960s, in keeping with the general emphasis on academic achievement, a student's political progressiveness could be judged primarily by his/her success in becoming a technical specialist. The Young Communist League (YCL) took in many students of mediocre or even poor backgrounds because they had outstanding futures as scientists, engineers, and technicians. By the time of the Cultural Revolution, the YCL was divided in that many of the veteran YCL members were of ordinary or bad class background whereas the more recent members tended to be of cadre background or worker background.
