ABSTRACT
The period since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the fall of the "Gang of Four" has witnessed a spectacular resurgence of Chinese higher education. Traditional Chinese education was self-contained and internally integrated. There was an implicit bond between intellectual and moral training. Liberal education, as understood in the mid-20th century, demands academic freedom. For all the abundance of intellectual and political commitments, Xinan Lianda's mainstream was one of scepticism. One purpose of liberal education is to expose the mind to different ways of thought, to alien institutions, to varied approaches to life. The value of a liberal education, not as a handmaiden but as a corrective, to helter-skelter modernization, was recognized by a Chinese educator speaking to an American audience. Moral freedom and ideological pluralism/American-style, hold little attraction for Zhou Peiyuan and, one may assume, even less for his more conservative colleagues. In 1949 the reunification of China under a one-party dictatorship sealed the fate of liberal education.
