ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to give an overview of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies toward intellectuals. It looks at the history of China’s thinkers and provides the intellectuals’ personal backgrounds during the Cultural Revolution and the Anti-Rightist movement. An intellectual tended to seek close friends whom he could trust and from whom he could acquire the political information necessary for self-protection. The chapter discusses the living and working conditions of intellectuals: their housing, income, and most important, the extent to which they have or lack the freedom to find and communicate knowledge in their fields. It examines the general legitimacy or illegitimacy of intellectuals in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) society. The chapter looks at the 1981 resolution on Party history and explores the recent Spiritual Pollution Campaign because of the light it throws on tensions in CCP definitions of proper and improper thinking.
