The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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CHAPTER 8
THE GROWTH OF THE
ACADEMIC COMMUNITY 1912-1949
Institutions
of
learning
not
only educate oncoming generations
but
also
create, import
and
disseminate culture
and
technology.
By
performing
such vital functions, a modern nation's schools and colleges, libraries and
laboratories become
of
central importance
to the
state
as
well
as to the
society in general. In the Chinese
case,
moreover, education had from early
times been
a
principal concern
of
government, and
so it
would become,
eventually,
a
central focus
of the
Chinese revolution after
1949.
Meanwhile during
the
first half
of the
twentieth century, education
proliferated
in
China
in the
most varied forms and with many kinds
of
foreign influence
and
participation.
The
voluminous record
is
widely
scattered
and
just beginning
to be
studied.
1
For
example,
new
work
suggests that functional literacy among
the
common people was more
widespread than
was
formerly assumed. Many important aspects
of
twentieth-century education need attention
-
the inheritance
of
social
style and pedagogic method from
the
thousands
of
academies
(shu-juari)
that had functioned in late imperial China, the growth of
a
modern school
system
and of
urban public education through
the
press,
the
formal
education
of
women,
the
rise
of
publishing houses like
the
Commercial
Press (Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, founded
at
Shanghai
in
1896,
a
great
publisher of journals as well as textbooks), and the founding of educational
associations
and new
schools
as
seedbeds
of
reform
and
revolution.
2
1
For helpful comments
on
this chapter
we
are indebted
to
Chiang Yung-chen, Paul A. Cohen,
Merle Goldman, Jerome Grieder, William
J.
Haas, John Israel
and
Suzanne Pepper, among
others. Education is a subject peculiarly rich in documentation. The principal early compilations
of documents
by
Shu Hsin-ch'eng
(4
vols. 1928;
3
vols. 1962) and
the
most recent
by
Taga
Akigoro
(;
vols. 1976) are noted in the bibliographical essay below.
1
On literacy see Evelyn S. Rawski,
Education
and
popular literacy
in
Cb'ing
China.
On
sbu-juan
see
Tilemann Grimm, 'Academies and urban systems
in
Kwangtung',
in G.
William Skinner,
ed.
Tie
city in late
imperial
China,
47 5
-98.
On the new school system to
1911,
Sally Borthwick,
Education
and social change
in
China:
the
beginnings
of
the modern
era.
On the
Commercial Press's work
in
education see Wang Yun-wu, Shang-wujin-sbu-kuan ju
bsin cbiao-ju nien-p'u
(A chronology
of
the
Commercial Press
and the New
Education), covering events, publications, reports,
etc.
1897—1972.
On the
vicissitudes
of
education
in
one province (Shantung)
see
David D. Buck,
'Educational modernization in Tsinan, 1899-1937', in Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner, eds.
The Chinese city between two
worlds,
171-212. The overall problems
of
education
in
modern China
will be discussed by Suzanne Pepper in CHOC 14, ch.
4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
3^2 THE GROWTH OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY
Within this broad terrain,
the
focus
of
this chapter
is
limited
to
higher
education. This fact
in
itself testifies
to
the
scholarly neglect thus
far of
the vital story of elementary and secondary education in Republican China.
It also reflects the greater visibility of efforts made by China's revolutionary
educators to create elite institutions capable of producing new upper- class
leaders.
After 1911
the
Chinese government's prolonged weakness opened
an
unusual window
of
opportunity
for
China's revolutionary educators.
Fervently patriotic
and
still endowed
as a
class with
the
prestige
of
scholarship, they
had
an
opportunity
to
lead
the way
in
creating
the
academic institutions needed
for
modernity. Their
new
role
had
both
intellectual
and
institutional aspects. Intellectually they confronted
the
necessity
of
reconciling
the
Chinese
and
Western Cultural traditions
-
a
task more awesome
in
its dimensions than most human minds have ever
faced.
The
vast proportions
of
this intellectual problem
and
how
it
was
approached have been appraised
in
other volumes
in
this series.
3
The
present chapter therefore focuses
on
the
academic community
and
its
institutional achievements
in the
first half
of
the twentieth century.
We confront here a tremendously complex but largely unexplored story
with three main facets. First, China's intellectual history has outpaced her
institutional history,
and we
know more about
the
late Ch'ing schools
of Neo-Confucian thought
—
the Sung
and Han
learning,
New
Text
and
Old Text scholarship, even
the
T'ung-ch'eng school
-
than we
do
about
the network
of
academies, libraries, printing shops
and
patrons that
sustained Confucian scholarship. Second,
in
China's relations with Japan,
politics
has
thus
far
eclipsed
the
academic story. Most
of
the thousands
of Chinese students who went
to
Tokyo returned
to
careers
of
service
in their homeland;
not all by any
means became revolutionaries. Many
no doubt taught
in
the new
schools
of
law and
government
{fa-cheng
hsueh-t'an£)
that proliferated
in the
late Ch'ing,
but the
content and reach
of their teaching, like other aspects
of
Japanese influence
in
Republican
China, remain still largely unknown. Third,
the
educational influences
streaming into China from Europe
and
America constitute
a
vast terrain
of unimaginable variety
and
unexplored proportions. Nearly
all the
nations
and all the
disciplines were involved
in
this largest
of
all cultural
migrations.
For
example, Catholic
and
Protestant missions
in all
their
diversity
lay
behind
the
Christian colleges
in
the
Chinese Republic,
yet
they were
but
threads
in
a
tapestry.
The
modern West was
in
flux
and
China herself was embarked on many transformations. Methods, curricula,
textbooks
and
systems
of
instructions from Japan, Europe
and
America
3
See
CHOC 11,
ch. 5 and
CHOC 12,
chs. 7 and 8.
For
a
more recent fresh account
see
Jerome
B.
Grieder, Intellectuals and
tie
state
in
modern China:
a
narrative history.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
EMERGENCE OF MODERN INSTITUTIONS }6)
all added their stimuli
to
the educational maelstrom
in
which the deeply
imbedded values and social roles
of
the
old
Chinese literati underwent
a gradual adaptation
to
modern needs. Given this preponderance
of
the
yet-to-be-discovered over the known, this chapter attempts only to block
out major areas and aspects of a new field.
One feature, however,
is
clear
-
in the face
of
Japanese expansion the
institutional structure of the unequal treaty system including extraterritori-
ality persisted;
and
foreign, especially American, influence
on
Chinese
higher education reached
a
high point despite the rapid rise
of
Chinese
nationalism.
The
1920s
in
particular were
a
period
of
vigorous Sino-
American collaboration
in
science and higher education.
THE EMERGENCE
OF
MODERN INSTITUTIONS 1898-1928
For analytic purposes we look
in
succession
at
the training of personnel,
the formation
of
certain major institutions, and aspects
of
research and
financial support.
In
each case
our
reconnaissance tries
to
offer
representative examples drawn from
a
terrain which
is
still imperfectly
surveyed. Provincial, municipal and technical/vocational institutions are
largely beyond our purview.
4
Personnel:
an
elite trained abroad
The leaders in the building-up of higher education were
a
truly extraordinary
group
of
people who responded
to
the needs
of
an extraordinary time.
When China's modern transformation required the creation
of
a system
of higher education comparable
to the new
systems arising
in
other
countries, this meant
in
human terms the training
of
a new scholar class
versed
in
Western
as
well
as
Chinese learning
—
a truly revolutionary
departure from long-established tradition. So revolutionary was this very
idea
-
that Chinese could and indeed must learn from foreigners
-
that
efforts
in
this direction after i860
had
been comparatively
few and
ineffective in comparison, for example, with Japan and India. The Ch'ing
government's inability
to
provide modern learning within China and
to
control those Chinese students it sent to study in Tokyo had in fact proved
to be
a
major cause of its downfall. The new educational elite thus grew
to maturity
in an age of
revolutionary change.
In
setting
up new
institutions they felt themselves
to be
creators
of a
new world,
not by
any means the defenders
of
an establishment already
in
being. One can
4
In
1922
a
survey by the National Association for the Advancement
of
Education reported the
existence
of
1,553 vocational schools in China. By 1925 the National Association for Vocational
Education was composed
of
more than ioo educational bodies. China jear
book,
hereafter CYB,
1926,
423.
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564 THE GROWTH OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY
only imagine the adventurous and determined spirit of those Chinese
women who came into higher education at a time when footbinding was
still being widely practised as the ancient Chinese way of keeping women
in subjection.
Several things characterized these educators. First of all, they were
generally men and women educated abroad. The generation of Liang
Ch'i-ch'ao (1873-1929) had sought foreign learning in Japan, that of Hu
Shin (1891—1962) sought it in Western Europe and the United States. The
size of this student migration is imperfectly known because, for example,
many more Chinese enrolled in Japanese schools and colleges than ever
graduated. One estimate of enrollees during 1900-37 is 136,000, while the
best figure for Chinese graduates from Japanese institutions during
1901-39 is i2,ooo.
s
The political contribution made by these returned
students from Japan stands out in the annals of the Revolution of 1911;
their academic contribution has been generally lost to sight. After 1915
the growing antagonism engendered by Japanese expansion and China's
rising nationalism all but eclipsed the Chinese academic debt to Japan;
no doubt future studies will exhume and appraise it.
6
The Sino-Japanese antagonism helped to turn Republican China's
scholars toward Western Europe and America. Chinese students making
the longer journey to the West required more financing and so were
more carefully chosen, more specifically committed, and more likely to
complete their studies. One estimate is that during the century
1854-195
3,
21,000 Chinese studied in American institutions.
7
However these figures may be further refined and analysed, it is evident
that the 20,000 or so Chinese who returned from the West in the twentieth
century were a remarkably small but potent group. In numbers, among
a population of some 400 million, they were as few in proportion as had
been the metropolitan graduates
(chin-sbih)
under the old regime. But
where their predecessors in the triennial examinations at Peking had
customarily accepted a personal bond of loyalty to the emperor who
nominally conducted the palace examinations, these scholars from the
Chinese Republic found that their foreign experience confirmed their
patriotic devotion to the Chinese nation. This new' returned-student' elite
were more than ever mindful of the Sung reformer Fan Chung-yen's
5
See M. Jansen, CHOC 11.351, citing Saneto Keishu, Cbugohgin Nibon ryugaku sbi, the major work
of the top Japanese specialist on Sino-Japanese educational relations.
6
The principal survey by Y. C. Wang, Chinese
intellectuals
and the West 1872-1)4), actually includes
the late Ch'ing efforts to learn from Japan as well as extensive data on many later aspects of
this subject. Aspects of Sino-Japanese intellectual relations are explored in Akira Iriye, ed. The
Chinese and the Japanese: essays in political and cultural interactions.
7
How many graduated is uncertain. See Y. C Wang, 119-20, 167, 185, citing data from the China
Institute in America.
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EMERGENCE OF MODERN INSTITUTIONS }6j
dictum,'
a
scholar should be the first to become concerned with the world's
troubles and the last
to
rejoice
at
its happiness'.
8
While the proportions
of returned students who went into government, industry, the professions,
the arts and education
is
still unknown,
it
seems plain that they enjoyed
a special status derived from
old
custom
as
well
as
from modern
revolution. They functioned
in a
widespread network
of
interpersonal
relations
or
kuan-hsi.
Those who elected
to
embark upon
the
task
of
creating a system of higher education clung firmly to the classical tradition
that
the
scholar
is not a
mere technical expert
but
must think like
a
statesman
on
behalf
of
the whole society, rulers and people alike. This
sense
of a
responsibility helped
the
new leaders returned from Europe
and America
to
begin building
the
academic institutions
of
the early
republic
—
the colleges, universities, libraries, laboratories
and
research
institutions needed
in a
twentieth-century nation.
Yet their extraordinary status
as a
selected
(or
self-elected)
few
who
had achieved the top level
of
scholarship was not
an
unmixed blessing.
Their experience abroad, usually
a
period
of
several years necessary
to
secure
a
Ph.D. degree, led these liberal intellectuals into
a
cosmopolitan
stance
of
unavoidable ambivalence.
9
Like
all who
study abroad, they
became
to
some degree bicultural,
at
home both
in
China's elite culture
and in that of the outer world. Added to their elite status as scholars, this
acquisition of foreign ways made them all the more alienated from village
China. The fact that they forged common bonds with the Western liberal
arts tradition ensured that the New Culture movement in education would
foster more than
the
mere transfer
of
technology,
but it
raised acutely
the problems
of
making their foreign training effective and relevant
to
China's problems, both
in
fact
and
(equally important)
in the
eyes
of
China's political
and
military elite
who
were called upon
to
give
the
educators continuing support.
At the
same time, some feel that their
foreign orientation threatened these scholars with deracination,
a
loss
of
the sense
of
community with their homeland,
in
short, anomie
and
alienation. Bicultural experience can confuse one's identity. The propor-
tions of this problem are as yet unknown.
It
may have been all the greater
for those many individuals
of
the May Fourth generation who had,
in
fact,
a
threefold educational background: Chinese (traditional and early
modern), Japanese, and American-European.
10
Thus the task
of
importing foreign learning
(in
both technology and
8
See James T.
C
Liu, 'An early Sung reformer: Fan Chung-yen', in John
K.
Fairbank, ed. Chinese
thought
and institutions, 111.
9
The paradoxes
of
this ambivalence were explained
in
particular
by
Joseph Levenson.
His
last
work was Revolution and cosmopolitanism: the Western stage and the
Chinese
stages.
10
To get an impression of the type of training received by educators of the Republican revolutionary
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
366 THE GROWTH OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY
values)
was
complicated both inside
and out.
Within
himself,
the
foreign-trained educator had
to
work
out his
self-image
of
how best
to
make his contribution. In his environment, meanwhile, he might confront
quite different expectations
of
how
he
should behave. One new feature
of modern education was the burden
of
administration. Residential and,
soon, coeducational colleges were
a new
phenomenon with
an
infinite
capacity
to
generate student opinion and organization, leading
to
strikes
and political movements. The new students
of
the Republic shared their
teachers' concern
and
sense
of
responsibility
for the
fate
of
the nation.
Often they demanded political action. Note 11 offers an impression of the
activities
to
which the educational elite applied themselves. Only
a
small
minority were able
to
pursue pure scholarship. Keeping their institutions
running was
a
constant problem.''
generation,
we
surveyed the experience
of
75 persons
as
follows:
Educational background Number %
of
total
1.
Passed traditional examinations
at various levels
2.
In Chinese modern-style schools
a. as students
b.
as
teacher or staff
3.
Studied abroad
in
a. Japan
b.
Europe and/or US
16 (minimum)
54
3°
21
24
20
72
40
28
35
The information
is
based
on a
representative selection
of
leading individuals,
the
Biographical
dictionary
of
Republican
China,
hereafter BDRC, ed. Howard L. Boorman and Richard C. Howard;
and
Hsin-hai ko-ming hui-i
lu (Recollections
of
the 1911 Revolution), 5 vols. There are inevitable
overlappings between the categories.
A
further look into the social background of
all
those who
took part
in
various liberal-reformist movements among
the
biographies
in
BDRC shows that
over one-third had come from the scholar-official class: Virginia E.
Reynolds,'
Social movements:
an analysis of leadership in China 1895-1927' (Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D. dissertation,
1983),
Part VB: Quantitative summary.
11
To get an
impression
of
the career activities
of
leading members
of
the academic community
1912—49, we totalled up the types
of
work pursued by 173 individuals. Roughly a third pursued
more than one type of activity.
Number of activities
Type
of
work (not
of
individuals) %
of
total
Academic teaching and research only
Teaching and educational administration
Teaching and research-institution administration
Teaching and government service outside education
Teaching and voluntary services
Teaching combined with other professional work
(e.g. library, journalism, publishing, writing)
This list is based on the biographies
of
173
individuals in BDRC whose professional activities ranged
37
73
2!
36
*4
38
21.3
42.4
14.4
20.8
,3.8
21.9
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EMERGENCE OF MODERN INSTITUTIONS 367
Sooner or later the educators also faced as a group the problem of their
relationship
to
political authority. Labouring
in the
shadow
of the
1200-year-old government examination system that was abolished only in
1905,
the Western-trained educators inherited the values and issues that
had concerned preceding generations of Chinese scholars at the same time
that they embraced new values and models met abroad. They succeeded
in creating by the 1930s a more autonomous and diverse system of higher
education, less directly under the thumb
of
the government and
of
an
official orthodoxy. Yet this was
a
temporary situation, due to the lack of
both
a
central government and
an
orthodoxy during the warlord era.
Education
in
China, because
of
the tradition
of
scholar-government,
remained intertwined with politics. Higher education had always been for
the ruling stratum, not for the individual commoner. To divorce
it
from
the ideological orthodoxy of the state would not be easy. Small wonder
that the growth of a more independent type of education separate from
politics was fitful and halting.
Moreover,
in
the early republic education was facilitated not only by
the weakness of central power but also by the pluralistic influence of the
imperialist powers. The interest
of
foreigners
in
China included
the
fostering of modern education both through Christian missionary schools
and colleges
and
through
the
setting
up of
autonomous educational
foundations, both protected
by
extraterritoriality. China's academic
development in 1912-49 may be seen as part of the worldwide growth of
modern learning in which North and South Americans, Russians, Japanese
and Indians
all at
one time
or
another turned
to
Western Europe
for
enlightenment.
Yet one
side-effect
of the
Chinese educated elite's
participation
in the
international world
was its
vulnerability
to the
xenophobic charge
of
being foreign-oriented. This bicultural, bilingual
elite educated in the outside world paid the price of sometimes feeling or
appearing as strangers in their homeland, even as persons in foreign pay.
The psychological and intellectual pressures of their experience in China
and abroad would move some
of
the politically minded wing
of
the
returned-student generation toward Marxism. The academically inclined
wing was also in need of a new system of
belief,
new verities to steer by.
Many educators adopted a fervent belief in the efficacy of
science.
Indeed
the talisman for China's catching up with the outside world became the
universal truth of'
science',
which had figured
in
reformist thinking
of
the 1890s as well as the New Culture movement. China's educators sought
from partial affiliation (such
as
teaching at college level
for
a
short period only) to life-long involvement
with various aspects of higher educational and research institutions. The group is admittedly selective,
but
it
embraces those persons who most actively influenced the growth
of
the modern academic
community.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
368 THE GROWTH OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY
her salvation through the applications of the ' scientific method', not only
in
the
natural
and
social sciences
but in the
humanistic sciences
and
Chinese historical studies as well. For some
it
was
a
tenet of faith which
took
on
almost religious proportions. Wang Feng-chieh,
a
professor of
education, expressed the prevalent attitudes of the 1920s when he declared
that
The old educational system and old national customs have been destroyed. New
education
-
an education based on science
—
has begun... We must realize that
an educational system cannot
be
obtained through imitation,
but
must
be
achieved through deliberation and
experience.
Western ways of education cannot
be transplanted
in
their entirety to China; we must consider the conditions in
China
and
make appropriate choices. Therefore
my
conclusion
is the
new
education must be guided by science: theories should be based on scientific data
and
proof,
practice should follow scientific methods, and the results should be
counted up scientifically.
12
Here were the main themes underlying educational modernization in the
early republic: that the old order had been irrevocably disabled with the
collapse of the imperial system, that China must work to establish a new
system
of
education
of
its own, and
-
following
the
rise
of
the New
Culture movement
-
that ' science' and scientific methods would prove
to be the firmest foundation upon which the new system could be built.
13
Universities: the
creation
of institutions
Bringing young
men and
also women into residential communities
presided over by faculty members was as much an innovation as the rise
of the factory system in industry. Similarly
it
had its forebears in China's
long educational history, though
the
connections have hardly been
explored as yet. The conscious aim of those who built up higher education
was usually to imitate foreign models. But which ones? The choice might
well be influenced by the foreign model's resonance with Chinese needs
or traditions. Unfortunately, while biographical materials are abundant,
institutional histories
are
still
few.
Below
we
look first
at
Peking
University, then at private, technical and Christian institutions, and finally
at the role played by foreign funding.
Peking
University.
In
1912 the new republic inherited from the fallen
Ch'ing dynasty, among other things,
a
small
and
rather uncertain
institution named Ching-shih ta-hsueh-t'ang or' Metropolitan University'.
12
Wang Feng-chieh, Cbung-km
cbiao-ju-shih
ta-ktmg (An outline history
of
Chinese education),
5.
Wang was
at
Ch'en-kuang University in Changsha.
13
On the various views
of
Science'
in
the New Culture movement, see B.
I.
Schwartz's summary
in CHOC 12.424-8, 440; also D. W. Y. Kwok,
Scientism
in
Chinese thought
ifoo—ifjo.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
EMERGENCE OF MODERN INSTITUTIONS 369
Founded during the reforms
of
1898,
it
drew heavily on the modernized
Japanese model while attempting to meet what its founders perceived
to
be an urgent Chinese need: to retrain some of the Ch'ing scholar-officials
so they would be reasonably knowledgeable about affairs and conditions
of the modern world. Surviving the empress dowager's
coup
d'etat of 1898,
this institution was reorganized in 1902 to add a teacher-training division,
and at the same time absorb the Interpreters' College or T'ung-wen kuan,
thus adding five foreign language programmes as well as basic sciences
to the existing curriculum.
14
The students in Peking University at the turn of the century were mainly
officials who enrolled
to
be taught
a
minimum
of
modern subjects, but
even before the 1911 Revolution the assessment of their accomplishments
were extremely low.
15
The quality of the students was uneven. Some, their
minds still firmly imbedded
in
the old civil examination system, treated
their experience
at
the new academy as
a
step toward another qualifying
degree, thereby giving the institution a reputation for decadence. Others,
however, more progressive and venturesome
in
outlook,
in
spite
of
an
environment
of
frivolity and indolence, were genuinely concerned with
current issues, and engaged
in
lively discussions
on
campus.'
6
At the
government level, however, there was still lacking a consensus on higher
educational policy, so there was no progress in developing a coordinated
structure for all levels of the educational system.
After Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei was appointed minister of education in 1912,
he
convened a National Provisional Educational Conference to serve as ' the
starting point of the nation's educational reforms'. Meeting in Peking in
July,
the
delegates from
all the
provinces charted
new
policies
and
regulations
in
response
to
these needs.
17
They concluded that Chinese
14
Ch'iu Yii-lin, 'Ching-shih ta-hsueh-t'ang yen-ko lueh' (A brief history
of
Peking University),
in
Cb'ing-tai
i-aen
(Informal records
of
the Ch'ing period) 5.1-2;
Yu
Ch'ang-lin, 'Ching-shih
ta-hsueh-t'ang yen-ko lueh',
in
Shu Hsin-ch'eng,
Chung-km chin-tai cbiao-yu-sbib
t\u-liao (Source
materials
on
modern Chinese education), 159-60.
On the
Interpreters' College
see
Knight
BiggerstafT,
The earliest
modern
government schools in
China.
After the Boxer Protocol of
1901
attempts
were made
to
establish universities
at
the provincial level, as
in
Shansi under the leadership of
Ku Ju-yung: see Chou Pang-tao,
Cbin-tai cbiao-yu bsien-cbin cbuan-lutb
(Biographical sketches
of
leaders
of
modern Chinese education), first part, 295. However, Brunnert
and
Hagelstrom
recorded in 1910 in their Present day political
organisation
of
China
that there was only one university,
the new one in Peking (p. 225). In the 1920s, year books listed half a dozen provincial institutions
devoted
to
agriculture
or
engineering, e.g. H. G. W. Woodhead, ed. CYB,
1926,
lists them
for
Chekiang, Fukien, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kiangsu and Shantung (434b).
15
Ch'iu Yu-lin, 2; Yu Ch'ang-lin, 160.
16
Yu T'ung-kuei, 'Ssu-shih nien ch'ien wo k'ao-chin mu-hsiao
ti
ching-yen' (How
I
matriculated
in my Alma Mater [Peking University] forty years ago),
in
T'ao Ying-hui, 'Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei yu
Pei-ching ta-hsueh 1917-1923', hereafter T'ao Ying-hui, 'Ts'ai/Peita',
Bulletin
ojthe
Institute
of
Modem History,
;
(1976) 268.
" Wo I, 'Lin-shih chiao-yu-hui jih-chi' (Diary of the Provisional Educational Conference), in Shu
Hsin-ch'eng, 296-7.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
37° THE GROWTH OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY
education was wanting
in
three aspects:
it
needed
to be
built into
a
well-articulated system, extended
to
reach all parts
of
the country, and
brought up to modern standards. Higher education for the first time took
its place,
at
least on paper, as part of an integrated national system.
Within the next two decades there would generally emerge in China
a
number of colleges and universities of diverse types
-
national, provincial,
or private in origin, with varied objectives. Their unfolding story would
reveal, however, that these institutions shared certain characteristics. The
general philosophy was that higher education constituted an indispensable
component
of
the larger task
of
national reconstruction, since
it
would
be the training ground
for
future leaders;
at
the same time, those who
took an active part in developing higher education were young intellectuals
who had studied
in
late-Ch'ing modern schools and become associated
with political movements. As
a
group they generally shared
a
common
origin
as
sons
of
scholar-class families. Many had worked
in
the cause
of the Republican revolution. They came
to
regard each other not only
as fellow-students
of
that period,
but
comrades
as
well
in
pursuit
of
national goals. Thus no one objected
to
Article
I
of the laws governing
colleges and universities officially announced in 1912: 'The objectives of
colleges and universities are
to
instruct [students]
in
advanced learning,
to train knowledgeable experts, and to meet the needs of the nation.'
18
Under the laws
of
1912, higher education
in
universities was
to be
conducted
by a
Faculty
of
Letters and
a
Faculty
of
Science, plus such
professional discipline as business, law, medicine, agriculture and engineer-
ing. To achieve the standing of
a
university an institution must have both
the Faculties
of
Letters and
of
Science,
or a
combination
of
Letters and
Law and/or Business,
or
Science and/or Medicine, Agriculture,
or
Engineering. Peking University, renamed National Peking University
during the chancellorship of Yen Fu, was the sole national university, that
is,
under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry
of
Education, from 1912
till the end
of
1916.
19
All was not smooth sailing for National Peking University
—
or ' Peita'
for short
—
in its new status; in fact, for five years it was rocked by student
protests, frequent changes
of
chancellor,
and
general uncertainty
of
institutional life,
20
all of which reflected the unsettled political condition
18
Ta-bsutb ling
(Ordinance on colleges and universities), promulgated by the Ministry of Education
in October 1912: see Shu Hsin-ch'eng,
Cbung-kuo chin-tai chiao-jii-sbib
t^u-liao
(Source materials
on modern Chinese education), 647. The 1917 revision
of
the ' Objectives'
in
this ordinance
removed a comma in the statement, so that the new version read ' to train knowledgeable experts
for meeting the needs of the nation'.
Ibid.
671.
"
Ibid.
647; T'ao Ying-hui,
'
Ts'ai/Peita', 271.
20
T'ao Ying-hui,' Ts'ai/Peita',
270-1.
A CCP view of Peita history is presented in Hsiao Ch'ao-jan
et
al.
Pei-cbing
ta-bsutb-bsiao-shih,
iSpt-iptf (A history of Peking University, 1898-1949).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008