Gordon White - Party and Professionals: The Political Role of Teachers in Contemporary China (Routledge Revivals)

Party and Professionals

Originally published in 1981, this study fits into a wider context of works analysing the impact of the social revolution on the structure of Chinese society since 1949. Party and Professionals focuses on the teaching profession in relation to social ranking. As a part of the intelligentsia, the socialist government has an ambiguous relationship with teachers of all levels and this work aims to highlight the governments political interactions with teaching professionals. This title will be of interest to students of Asian studies, Politics, International Relations and History.

First published in 1981
by M.E. Sharpe Inc.

This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge
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1981 M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 81005256

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-65347-4 (hbk)

The Ideological and Policy Context

The Social Prestige of Teachers

Issues of Income and Material Welfare

The Political Status of Teachers

Teachers as a Political Interest Group

Conclusions: The Political Nature of the Teaching Profession

Copyright 1981 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, New York 10504

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Portions of the Appendix first appeared in Chinese Education XII:4 (Winter 1979-80), and are there so identified.

White, Gordon, 1942-

Party and professionals.
Includes bibliographical references.

1. Teachers China Political activity. 2. Teachers socioeconomic status China. 3. Communism and education. I. Title.

LB2844.1.P6W48371.10481-5256

ISBN 0-87332-188-XAACR2

Printed in the United States of America

To my mother Vera and sister Judith, both members of the teaching profession.

My first thanks go to the Department of Political Science (SGS), Australian National University, and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, for their financial and institutional support for the project of which this book is a part. Penny Lockwood of the Australian National University contributed greatly through her meticulous and enthusiastic assistance in locating and cataloging relevant materials.

A special debt is owed to Ai Ping for doing such an excellent job in translating those materials in the Appendix that originally appeared in Chinese Education XII:4 (Winter 1979-80); the balance, and majority, of the Appendix translations were drawn from such standard U.S. and Chinese government sources as SCMP, JPRS, NCNA, etc. Doug Merwin, my editor at M. E. Sharpe, Inc., helped me a great deal through his initial encouragement, his ability to keep me up to schedule and his invaluable advice on the structure and content of the book.

Several people read the text in various drafts, and the final manuscript has benefited greatly from their comments. I owe particular gratitude to Ron Dore, Joel Glassman, Ann Kent and Jon Unger. Thanks also to Vincent Oates who was very helpful in providing me with copies of relevant articles from the magazine Peoples Education from his personal collection.

Many people have been involved in typing successive drafts my particular thanks go to Judy Rix of Australian National University, and June Hutfield and Penny Barraclough of the Institute of Development Studies.

Finally, my very special gratitude goes to Christine White who has helped me through some difficult times with her love and encouragement and without whom I would never have completed this work.

This case study is part of a wider effort to assess the impact of socialist revolution on the structure of Chinese society since Liberation in 1949 and the role of the socialist state in the process of postrevolutionary transformation. In the tradition of successful Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have sought to use the ideological, political, administrative, and coercive powers of the state to restructure Chinese society along socialist lines. The political authorities have attempted to regulate levels of social prestige, confer or withhold power or influence, and determine the differential allocation of material income. To the extent that they have been successful, the specific social positions of individuals, groups, strata and classes, and the stratification system in general, are determined by a process of conscious distribution , The three basic variables of stratification analysis power, prestige, and material welfare can thus be seen as distributive social goods to which different sectors of society have differential access.

In their efforts to change Chinese society, Party leaders have not faced a tabula rasa. They have had to confront patterns of differentiation and inequality inherent in the social division of labor of the old society they sought to replace and the new society they seek to build. In the realm of society, the position of individuals and collectivities depends on their market position, their possession of skills, knowledge, or other attributes which command differential exchange values on the market. These attributes are the material basis of their differential political claims to prestige, power, and material privilege.

The social position of an individual or group in China and in other socialist societies is thus determined by the imperatives of state and society, political distribution and market allocation, what the Polish sociologist Bauman calls the realms of officialdom and class. Each of these realms embodies a distinct structure of power: on the one side, political power resting on the normative and structural resources of the state; on the other side, social power resting on position in the social division of labor. The actual social position of an individual or group depends on the mutual interaction and interpenetration between these two systems of power. This interaction takes the form of politics, distributive politics ; stratification and inequality are the structural outcomes of this political process. On the one hand, those who possess market power try to cash in or realize their exchange values to acquire favorable symbolic prestige, access to political power and material benefits; on the other hand, the socialist state, impelled by its directional nucleus, the Party, attempts to impose a system of social differentiation which, to a greater or lesser degree, clashes with the imperatives of the market. This is a structural contradiction in socialist society and expresses itself behaviorally in terms of distributive politics. This latter process of pressure, persuasion, exchange, and bargaining is the subject of our investigation. Thus in our attempt to elucidate new dimensions of stratification in postrevolutionary Chinese society, we are less concerned with the traditional sociological question Who ranks where? than with the traditional political science question Who gets what?