ABSTRACT
In 1956, China had more than 600 million inhabitants, only 100,000 of whom were first-class intellectuals—that is to say, products of universities and other institutions, whose value as scholars was still intact, and 3,840,000 of whom were "ordinary" intellectuals, products of secondary schools or technical colleges. The ideological re-education of the intellectuals was undertaken as part of a general propaganda campaign whose intensity and forcible character are well-known; it was also often carried out by courses lasting several months, held in regional "revolutionary universities" such as Peking in North China and Wuhsi in East China. The campaign was directed against cadres, Party members, and intellectual circles guilty of ideological blindness rather than against Wu Hsun, a social outcast looking to the rich for support. The great Campaign for the Remolding of Intellectuals began at the end of the autumn. Although the system had changed, the old culture still exercised a powerful attraction.
