Teaching English in China

Author(s): Diana Lary

Source: The China Quarterly , Oct. - Dec., 1965, No. 24 (Oct. - Dec., 1965), pp. 1-14
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and
African Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/651837

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Teaching English in China *
By DIANA LARY

As we reported in the " Quarterly Chronicle " in No. 21, the Chinese
Embassy in the U.K. has been recruiting teachers of English. Among the
first batch of recruits was Diana Lary who recently returned home.

CHINA lost her Soviet experts. But this did not mean the end of foreigners
working in China. Instead of employing engineers and technicians from
the motherland of Socialism, the Chinese Government is now employing
a motley assortment of foreigners, almost exclusively from non-
Communist countries, as language teachers and as "polishers" for
foreign language publications.
These people are in China for a variety of reasons. Some-very
few-are revolutionaries. Some are sent by their governments, from
Cuba, Albania, Pakistan, Nepal and the East European countries. There
is a strange selection of misfits, ranging from American political refugees
through Belgian " true " Marxist-Leninists to deserters from the Algerian
war (still subject to arrest in France). There are people who have studied
Chinese, mainly in England or France, and have taken jobs in China
because it is the only economical way to go there. Some people are there
in search of the exotic. Finally there is a tiny group of English and
Americans, permanent expatriates, who have been in China for a very
long time, and who are in attitude more Chinese than the Chinese.
(These people are commonly known to the other foreigners as the
"trusties" or the 200 percenters.)
There are maybe a hundred teachers, the majority working in Peking,
scattered over about ten language schools. Almost all arrived last year,
on contracts for a minimum of two years.
The teachers are not the only new arrivals, for many of the foreign
language institutes are new too. Four were set up in Peking in 1964,
and several more in major provincial centres. At the same time, the
existing institutes were greatly enlarged. They now range from the
Peking Foreign Languages Institute with several thousand students, to a
charming establishment housed in villas and temples in the old imperial
hunting park, whose " students " are all soldiers.
* While in China I made all the criticisms mentioned in this article to the authorities at
the school where I was teaching. Criticism from foreign teachers is asked for, but
when given is seldom heeded.
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

Why this sudden expansion in the teaching of foreign

why the importation of bourgeois foreigners as teach
"A foreign language is a useful tool in the class s
invariably the reason that a Chinese student will gi
foreign language, and by the class struggle, he mean
going on in China now, but the international one. (
course its [self-appointed?] leaders.) China has been forging
"tools " for a long time now. However, it has come to light recently
that some of these tools, like the iron from the backyard furnaces, are
not very servicable. Many are simply redundant. These are the people
who studied Russian, whose usefulness has fallen off with the decline
in communication between China and the Soviet bloc. (Russian has now
been officially replaced as No. 1 foreign language in China by English.
After English come French, Spanish and Arabic.) But many more have
only a limited use, because the standard they have reached as linguists
is so low. Matters are said to have come to a head when Chou En-lai
went to Algeria in 1963. He suffered the agonisingly face-losing
experience of having to correct his interpreters, as his French was
considerably better than theirs. The word went out that something h
to be done, that standards had to be raised and output expanded.
This was the pronouncement from on high. There were, however
difficulties in implementation. The Chinese teachers of foreign languages
came from two sources: they were either people who had learne
languages "before Liberation" (i.e., before 1949) and were ipso facto
bourgeois, politically unreliable and of limited usefulness; or they wer
people from the institutes which had produced the inefficient interpreters
but who had reached an even lower standard. (The best students are
naturally taken for interpreting work.) A new source of teachers had
to be found. Foreigners were the answer.
The plan was for foreigners to teach Chinese students and their
Chinese teachers how to speak foreign languages fluently and colloqu
ally. Students were to be taught entirely in the foreign language, no
through the medium of Chinese: the so-called direct method. Foreigne
were to co-operate in preparing teaching materials, in writing text
books, and in making tape-recordings for use after class. Officially, an
as presented to the foreign teachers, the idea was to expose students to as
much idiomatic, colloquial foreign language as possible, and to let the
absorb it.
If this plan had reflected what the Chinese really wanted (and if more
than 5 per cent. of the foreign teachers had been experienced and trained
in the direct method), it might have worked. But as it is at the
moment, one may say fairly safely that the interpreters produced with
the help of foreign teachers will be little better than those produced
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

without, and that the language they will speak

or fluent than that spoken by present-day inter
What the Chinese want taught is a strange gro
produced in the rarefied air of Peking, whic
equivalents in any given language to Chinese.
tion is to teach students how to speak Chine
using Chinese expressions, Chinese concepts
The underlying idea is that if you can say it
it in any other language. If one suggests,
three-eight working style" means nothing in
Chinese has been borrowing from foreign lan
now it is the turn of these languages to take
protests that "three-eight" is a musical ter
better to translate san-pa tso-feng as "the r
working used in the Peoples' Liberation Army
is too far from the Chinese.
This attitude is based partly on the genuine and sincerely held belief
in the superiority of Chinese, and partly on the fear that the good students
of Chairman Mao should be exposed to anything politically impure.
As virtually everything ever written, with the exception of the works of
Stalin, Lenin and Mao and the mountain of material produced in China
since Liberation, is definitely impure by modern Chinese standards,
the choice of teaching material is limited. The Chinese have got around
this limitation by insisting that all material must either be translated
from Chinese, or written by a Chinese in a foreign language, or by a
foreigner, working under the supervision of a text committee, which
assiduously rejects material on political grounds. For example, a text
on Tien An Men Square was rejected, because one sentence referred to
the Great Hall of the People as "a yellow stone building with grey
pillars," instead of as "the moslt magnificent building in the world,"
which is what it is held to be in China.
However they are written, all texts are based on Chinese subjects:
"Peking," "International Labour Day in Peking," "Ministers with
Pick and Shovel" (Chairman Mao working on the Ming Tombs
Reservoir), "Chairman Mao and the Wounded Soldier," "The Sweet
Potato Patch" (Chairman Mao digging spuds as a boy), "Lei Feng
the Great Fighter," "The Childhood of Lei Feng," and many other
thrilling titles make up the students' curriculum. All texts must be
censored by the political department before they may be seen by
the students. The most common method of text selection is in fact
for the political department to send out a text in Chinese, which will be
translated into different foreign languages by the various departments,
checked by the foreign teachers for accuracy in the language, rechecked
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

by the political department for purity, and finally given to

This can be a time-consuming and frustrating process.
Very ocasionally, advanced students will be given orig
a Daily Worker editorial, or a piece about England writ
manent British resident in Peking. One such describ
circular city divided into the East End and the West End
End the people are rich, ride in luxurious cars, live in la
houses and shop in luxury shops; in the East End, the p
and in rags, they live in slums and do not have enough t
The results of this method of teaching English are dishea
hardly good English to talk about " going to the country
active part in physical labour, going all out, faster, bet
economically than ever before to realise the aims of the thr
and to adhere closely to the thinking of our great and g
Yet thousands of sentences like this are produced every
in maybe twenty different languages, and these are the kin
by which Chinese interpreters will try and communicate wi
in years to come. (The political emphasis is increasing,
the ssu ching (four clean-ups) movement gets under way
teacher is faced with teaching a bastardised version of hi
There is no getting round this problem. If the foreigner
the text, and teaches something more natural, he will
ignored by his students who pin their faith on the wr
presented in the texts, and secondly, his deviations will be r
Chinese teacher after he has left class. The "polisher
frustrations because their corrections may be reject
grounds and they lack even the compensation of contact
Once the foreigner has accepted this fundamental imp
will not be teaching a convincing version of his own
picture becomes much brighter. The students are wonde
of dedicated, highly political Komsomols and charming,
young Chinese. When one says that they are highly
means that they are very fond of quoting slogans, not that
sophisticated politically. They seem frequently to miss t
point of a slogan. This dialogue will illustrate the point
Student: We must all learn from Lei Feng.
Teacher: Why?
Student: Because Chairman Mao has called on us to learn
Teacher: Why does Chairman Mao tell you to do that
Student: Because Lei Feng sets us a wonderful examp
Teacher: Why does he set you a wonderful example?
Student: Because Chairman Mao calls upon us to learn
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

Nobody has got the point that Lei Feng did sim
deeds, which all of them could do too.
Most first-year students are eighteen, very young for their age by
Western standards. They are beginning to be aware of the difference
between the sexes, in the way that twelve- or thirteen-year-olds would be
in England. The boys quite enjoy teasing the girls, but the girls are
still too shy to retort. They are not anything like as drab or as serious
as they are frequently made out to be. Admittedly, none of them has
more than two or three basic outfits of clothing, but the girls will often
try to make themselves look better by wearing coloured woollen polo-
neck collars, and matching plastic hair-ribbons. (The Shanghai students
are much better dressed than students from other parts of China-some
have quite definitely tight trousers.)
The foreign teacher benefits from the traditional importance of the
student/teacher relationship, which is still powerful enough to overcome
the veto on foreigner/Chinese relationships. Every teacher is closer to
his students than to any other Chinese, although it is not until after
one has taught them every day for several weeks that they really begin
to thaw out. Perhaps this shyness is why so many Western visitors
have found Chinese students aggressive and humourless.
Students are selected on three grounds: political, regional and
educational. The educational qualification for becoming a student is
graduation from senior middle school. Standards vary, for middle
schools in the big cities are much better than in the country. The
regional qualification depends on a quota system whereby every institute
of higher education takes students from all over the country. This
is designed to help break down regionalism, still a very powerful force
in China. By far the most important qualification is the political one.
It consists of two parts: the political level of the student himself, and
his background. The student must be completely pure politically. If
he has any record of bad political attitude at middle school, he will not
stand much chance of getting into college. As for his background,
ideally he should come from a worker or peasant family, and, according
to school authorities, 80 per cent. do.
In the long term, this selection system is logical. It is prejudiced
against children from bourgeois and intellectual backgrounds, and in
favour of peasant children, for both the regional and the political
factors operate in their favour. (It should be noted that it is practically
impossible to be deviant politically if you come from a lowly enough
peasant origin.) The peasants have a much lower standard of education
than the urban Chinese. Middle schools are more primitive, and in any
case, most peasant children have to spend a lot of time every year helping
with the farming. It is clear that if they are going to receive higher
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

education it must be made easier for them to get into

they must get higher education; otherwise 80 per cent
population will continue to be second class citizens. In
term, however, this means that many students get into c
should not really be there, and hold back the progress of
students.
Students have about eight hours of more or less formal w
Sundays excepted. More than half of this time is given to
subject that they are studying. This means that language s
sixteen hours' classwork in their language a week, plus two
evening for revision, assimilation and homework. These eve
are supervised by a young teacher, who has special respon
one class. The amount of time any class spends with a fore
varies. A few foreigners are assigned just one class, and n
others, but most divide their time among several classes.
Besides work on their main subject, students take course
Language and in the History of the Chinese Communist Pa
which account for at least two hours a week. Physical educa
basketball or track sports, takes up another two to four h
And then there are the various political activities, political stud
meetings, etc., which consume at least one afternoon and eveni
This may seem a fairly arduous timetable, but the Chine
are happy with it. In fact most of them work at least ten
hours a day, and snatch moments throughout the day to
vocabulary or practice pronunciation. They have a very gre
to learn.
Student life is very simple. Students do not pay fees or
sleep seven to a small room consisting of four bunk beds i
with one empty to hold suitcases, plus a desk and chair per
are supported by their parents, if their parents can afford
majority get a maintenance grant, or at least a partial one.
is 15 yuan (?2) a month. Of this, 14 yuan will go for all m
canteen, and they will have about 1 yuan (7s. 6d.) spending
do not expect to buy new clothes. These are made for the
mothers, often from homespun cloth. The food in the can
an extremely high standard for institutional cooking and t
certainly eat vast amounts. They have an allowance of
30 kilos of rice a month, varying slightly according to th
which gives them, if they need it, two big bowls per me
them do not use up their ration; they occasionally collect
tickets in an " emulate Lei Feng drive." Student lives revo
the college, which provides them with food, lodging, tuiti
guidance, entertainment and a job when they gradua
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

them will only go outside the college once or tw

into Peking or to the Summer Palace. After
who had come all the way from South Chin
Peking city.
Entertainment consists of regular films a
students themselves, notably an excruciating
English Evening, when every class puts on a
songs sung in English with disastrous results
Vietnamese epics, and, incredibly enough, poe
little star," and "Little drops of water, littl
evenings may last four or five hours, and are g
Another class of "entertainment" is partici
These are all the more fun because one never kn
to happen, or how many people will be chose
man demonstration (usually the first one in
every class will go. If it is a 500,000-man dem
indignation" mounts against the "U.S. imper
will go but if it is a million-man demonstrat
will be out for the whole day. Such a huge d
" spontaneously " when the Americans invad
The students are genuinely enthusiastic about th
They come back glowing from the excitemen
Discipline is never a problem with Chinese
natural to them to do what they are told wi
dislike something, they will simply do it wit
take their time over it. Some students are
morning exercises, which they must all per
morning. But it would not occur to them to
just go down onto the sports ground and wav
while their keener classmates bounce vigorou
The only students who may give trouble a
high cadres. Because their connections put th
criticism system, they can afford to be argume
ent-something most students would not
whose father is a Minister refused consistentl
grumbled that he had not chosen to study E
seldom allocated to colleges of their own ch
for his " bad political attitude " had his moth
and " speak" to the leadership of the school.
left to the imagination, but the boy was not bot
Students must do a month's physical lab
divided into two two-week stints, one of wh
helping with the harvest. In the case of a n
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

the students spend the other two weeks helping to put up e

lay out paths, dig a swimming pool and so on. Generall
this work very much. The work is hard but not exhaust
them very fit. This kind of physical activity is certain
popular than swimming. A major campaign was launche
to get as many Chinese as possible into the water, amongst o
" for the defence of the motherland." The girls especially w
with the idea, and employed a full range of delaying tact
Unfortunately, some people were over-enthusiastic in their
the Party's call, and there was a steady stream of drownings
people had drowned in the lake at the Summer Palace by
though it is not more than four feet deep.
On the whole, students are very content with their li
not neurotic; their worries are mainly confined to their wo
conscientiously and long, though they tend to learn by r
really applying their minds. They have too great a con
written word as opposed to the spoken. But the majority
good progress within the limits set by the kind of lan
supposed to learn. If they were learning English as s
English, or, more importantly, as spoken by Africans (for m
are destined for service in Africa), it would be quite imp
Examination time presents the usual problems of anx
and tears from the girls, plus some novel ones. As no s
dismissed from college except on political grounds, it is i
they should all pass smoothly from one grade to ano
room for those who come after them. In a case where fou
classes were considerably weaker than the other five, th
simply to set two first-year examinations, one easy and o
When a large number of students still failed, the marks wer
so that no one had less than a 3, the pass mark. Officia
all passed the same examination and gained the same qua
The administration of a college is interesting, in that the
are selected not on their professional qualifications but o
merits. A good political superstructure helps to kee
underneath. But it also creates problems, especially in lan
Out of the top ten people in one institute, only two had eve
of any foreign language; five of them were in fact ex-army
were splendid people but had no idea of the problems wh
solved in the institute they were supposed to be running
the perennial problems of Chinese higher education: how mu
should the non-expert political staff have over the profe
The answer at the present time seems to be that they
complete authority. In any case, most intellectuals h
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

frightened by the aftermath of the Hundred

strong protests about political control ove
fight it out.
As for the Chinese teachers, they may be divided roughly into three
categories, based on age. The older teachers are those who studied,
before Liberation, with foreigners. They are usually the most
competent, both as teachers and as linguists, but their bad political status,
as members of the bourgeoisie, means that they are not given any
responsibility and that they are not well trusted. They come in for a
lot of criticism. Teachers who learned English from Americans will
be criticised quite gratuitously because they have " undesirable"
American accents. The second group are slightly younger, people who
have grown up since the Liberation. They are characterised by
their cravenness, and by their generally low standard of competence in
their work. They tend to be yes-men, faithfully implementing commands
from above, even when they are unworkable. The third group are the
recent graduates. Politically they are fiery and assertive. They speak
their minds and criticise their elders in the true Chinese Communist
tradition, but their motives are genuine-a desire to improve the standard
of the teaching. Most of them work very hard, both at their teaching
work and at improving their own language proficiency. Their lives,
like the students', revolve around the college, and they are devoted to it.
Many of the older teachers are married, and go home to their families
every night. But the young ones who have not reached the age of
consent (28 for men, 25 for girls) live at school in almost as spartan
a manner as the students, except that they are four instead of seven to
a room. Their starting salary is ?7 a month and many of them manage
to send half of this home to their parents.
The staff/student ratio is impressive. In one English Department
there were thirty-five teachers, including four foreigners, to 150 students.
The foreigners accounted for a third of all the teaching work. The
rest was shared among the more competent Chinese teachers. This
included all the older teachers, plus a few of the young ones. Of the
thirty-five teachers, ten spoke good English, quite adequate for teaching.
Another fifteen were capable of speaking simple English, but not of
teaching it. The rest never showed any signs of either understanding
or speaking English. They performed nebulous functions such as
writing teaching notes and grammatical explanations in Chinese. They
are frankly redundant; anything that they produce in the way of teaching
aids has to be rewritten by the foreign teachers, who are only supposed
to check it. The reason they are there at all seems to be that once
someone has been trained for any specific job, however badly he may
do it, he must work at it. So even though these people cannot speak
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

English, the fact that they have done a four-year cours

means that they will teach it for the rest of their lives.
From the description given here, it may seem that for
teaching in China is in a state of some confusion, and t
teaching programme is unlikely to achieve what it has
There is little evidence to the contrary. This is sad, in view
and enthusiasm contributed by the senior staff of langu
by the young teachers and by the students themselves.
principal reasons why this situation has developed are c
spheres of Chinese higher education. The directors do not have
enough useful experience to match their enthusiasm. The people who
might offer helpful advice are either not in a position to do this-
experienced, competent people with bad bourgeois political status-
or are too fearful to stand out against a higher decision-the post-
Liberation generation, who are mainly concerned with staying out of
trouble. But the most important reason is that politics reigns supreme,
and demands sacrifices from the non-political aspects of higher education.
(In fact it is denied that anything can have a non-political side.) The
Party calls on the students of New China to be red and expert. They
must be red first and expert second; there is no question of being
expert without being red. Theoretically, if you are red, you will find it
easier to become expert. This has some truth in it, for the determination
and enthusiasm that being red generates in the young certainly makes
them work harder, but it also has detrimental side effects. The range
of what may be learned is cut down drastically on political grounds,
so that it becomes virtually impossible to get an all-round education.
Learning only what one is told to dulls the intelligence; it is rare to
find a student with an inquiring mind and those that do are destined
for political trouble in the future.
The political aspects of modern Chinese education have a particularly
adverse effect on the teaching of foreign languages. To speak another
language really well assumes that one can think in the language and
can express oneself in ways natural to it. If, however, one may only
say the kinds of things which are politically good in Chinese, one's
grasp of any foreign language will be severely limited. China's drive " to
play an increasingly important role in safeguarding world peace " (quote
from a first-year text) may be hampered in the future by her difficulties
in communicating with " her friends all over the world."

The United Kingdom

(Text taught in the Peking Foreign Languages Institute)
The highest mountains in the United Kingdom are in the central and northern
parts of Scotland, in Wales and in the North-West of England, but they are
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

by no means high by our standards. There are m

none of them are very long. The Thames, on wh
through rich agricultural districts to the sea.
For its size, the United Kingdom has a large po
concentrated in the cities. As a result, a consi
country's food has to be imported. The wealth
people is controlled by a handful of monopoly ca
the rulers of the country. Britain used to be
power in the world, and she is still trying to ha
colonial power; but since the end of World War I
the position of junior partner of U.S. imperi
rapidly breaking up owing to the victories of
movement in Asia and Africa.

THE UNITED KINGDOM-THE POLITICAL SCENE

The United Kingdom is a bourgeois democracy-in other words a bourgeois
dictatorship dressed up as a democracy. In an attempt to make the disguise
convincing, the British ruling class has set up an elaborate political structure.
At the top of this structure is the monarchy. But though they are
nominally at the top, the kings and queens of today do not have real
independent power. They are instruments of the monopoly capitalist class,
and must serve it and carry out its orders. If one of them proves
unsatisfactory in any way, he is kicked out and a more obedient royal
servant is put in his place. Members of the Royal Family travel about
Britain and the British Empire attending meetings, ceremonies and social
functions of various kinds and generally putting on a show. This is meant
to keep the minds of the masses off matters of real importance and to cover
class lines with talk of loyalty to the Crown.
Under the king or queen is Parliament, which drafts, discusses and passes
the laws, which the monarch merely signs. Parliament is divided into two
houses: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Lords are not
elected. They are appointed by the Government or inherit their titles. A
few of these titles have been handed down in wealthy feudal or semi-feudal
land-owning families for centuries, but the vast majority have been awarded
during the past century or less to capitalists who have served their clas
well. In recent years a new kind of title has been introduced-that of the life
peer, who does not pass his title on to his eldest son as other peers do. This
arrangement has been made so that the Government can be sure of having
enough of its followers in the House of Lords, which might otherwise
delay or obstruct laws which the Government wishes to pass. For the
House of Lords is still somewhat influenced by feudal ideas and interests,
while the Government, which is based on the House of Commons, represents
monopoly capitalism.
The House of Commons has some 640 members, elected by men and
women of 21 years and more. People deceived by them maintain that this
method of election is most fair and democratic. Actually elections merely
give the voters the opportunity to choose which of the two or more
bourgeois parties will hold office and govern them. In any case, though
there is a good deal of debate and discussion in the House of Commons
important issues, policies and actions are decided outside the Parliament
by the "Inner Cabinet." This is a handful of men closely linked to th
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

British Monopoly Capital and its Masters in Washington. All tha

can do is give their approval to something that has already b
There are two main political parties in Britain today: the Cons
or Tory Party, and the Labour Party, which the Tories inaccu
"socialist." The Tories are the undisguised agents of the bour
leaders of the Labour Party are the agents of the bourgeoisie in
of the working-class. The rank-and-file supporters of the Labou
mostly workers who belong to the Trade Unions. They want "soc
but they are not Marxists. So the Labour Party and Trade Union
by using socialist-sounding phrases, are able to deceive the work
effectively than the Tories. This makes them valuable servants of the
capitalists, especially when the capitalist system faces a crisis. There is
another small party, the Liberal Party, which is supported mainly by the
petty-bourgeoisie. The Communist Party of Great Britain was founded in
1921. In the course of its history it has led the workers in many mass
struggles and has given them some education in Marxism. At the same time
it has been affected by revisionism and is at present under revisionist
leadership. But there are still some Marxists among the rank-and-file of
the Party who have left it or have been expelled by the revisionist leaders.
Some of them have formed groups and do propaganda. Out of the
struggles for Marxism both inside and outside the Party a Marxist
organisation will sooner or later arise to lead the working class of Britain
to Socialism and Communism.

Notes:

1. The kings and queens are figureheads, parasites, blood suckers, their j
is to eat, drink, travel, read speeches written out for them and squan
millions of pounds a year exacted from British tax-payers, tools of t
monopoly capitalist class, serve the interests of that class, serve
deceive the people.
2. So-called free election-meaning to choose between two common
evils; no changes for the better, cut-throat competition, name-calling,
underhand methods, self-advertising, humbug.
3. British Labour Party: former Labour Prime Ministers like Attlee going
in and out of Buckingham Palace being knighted for their faithful
service to monopoly capital.

Ministry of Higher Education's Regulations Governing Enrolment

of New Students for 1965

In order to implement the educational guide-line of "making those who

receive an education obtain all-round development morally, intellectually
and physically and become socialist-minded labourers with culture" and to
cultivate talent needed in socialist revolution and socialist construction and
train them to be successors to the cause of the proletarian revolution,
institutions of higher learning must, under Party leadership, carefully and
conscientiously select those new students who are good in political thinking,
scholastic standing, and physical fitness for enrolment. Additionally, they
must complete enrolment assignments qualitatively as well as quantitatively.
The Ministry of Higher Education has laid down the following
regulations governing the enrolment of new students by schools of higher
learning this year: . . .
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 TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

All citizens of the People's Republic of China who are senior middle
school graduates, or who have attained a cultural level equivalent to senior
middle school education or who are under 25 years old (workers, peasants,
educated youths who have engaged in industrial or farm production and
other physical labour for more than two years, discharged armymen and
in-service personnel may be under 27 years of age), after having passed the
physical examinations given by medical units designated by the local student
enrolment organs and having met one of the following conditions, may apply
to take the entrance examinations:
This year's senior middle school graduates with letters of recommenda
tion from their schools;
This year's graduates from intermediate technical schools who have
been approved by the work departments in charge or by the local depart-
ments of educational administration to further their education and who have
letters of recommendation from their schools;
In-service personnel of Party and Government organs, work units,
enterprises and mass organisations who have the approval of, and letters of
recommendation from, their respective work units;
Armymen who have been transferred to other professions and demobilised
servicemen with letters of proof from the People's Council or civil affairs
departments above the hsien level of large and medium-sized cities, and above
the ch'ii level in their locality, or from the army units above the regimental
level;
Returned overseas Chinese students and students from Hong Kong and
Macao with letters of proof from overseas Chinese affairs organs or the
Guidance Committee for Senior Middle School Graduates of Hong Kong
and Macao Returning to Canton for Further Education; and
Other young intellectuals with letters of proof from people's communes
or People's Councils above the ch'ii level.
Schools participating in the nation-wide unified student enrolment
programme shall conduct examinations in two major categories-science,
engineering, agriculture and medicine on the one hand and literature and
history on the other-in accordance with the different nature of specialisation
in the student enrolment programme.
The subjects for examination are as follows:
In the first category, they are the Chinese language, political knowledge,
mathematics, chemistry and foreign languages.
In the second category, they are the Chinese language, political knowledge
history and foreign languages.
Under the subject of foreign languages, candidates sitting for the
examinations may choose either Russian or English.
Candidates taking examinations in specialties such as philosophy,
finance and economics shall be examined in mathematics. The results of
the examinations are for reference only and are not included in the aggrega
marks. Candidates taking examinations in the specialty of foreign language
-with the concurrence of the student enrolment committee-shall be given
an oral examination in localities provided with favourable conditions.
Workers, peasants, educated youths who have been engaged in industrial
or farm production and other physical labour for more than two years,
demobilised servicemen, and in-service personnel (including teachers of
primary or secondary schools) taking examinations in specialties such as
literature and history may be exempted from examinations in foreign
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 THE CHINA QUARTERLY

languages if they so desire. However, those taking examinations in the

specialty of foreign languages shall not be exempted.
Candidates from regions inhabited by national minorities taking examina-
tions for admission to schools of higher education may be exempted from
examinations in foreign languages if they so desire (but those taking
examinations in the specialty of foreign languages shall not be exempted).
Examination subjects for new students of the schools of fine arts and
physical education shall be fixed by appropriate departments and schools
themselves ....
Prior to accepting new students, schools of higher learning shou
closely scrutinise the political status, scholastic standing and physi
condition of the candidates. Selection should be based on the candidates'
order of preference stated in their applications and on the examination
results, from high to low marks, taking into account the candidates' political
status, scholastic standing and physical fitness.
To ensure unmistakably the quality of new students admitted to schools
of higher learning, their political status and physical fitness should be
immediately re-examined. If a re-check is unsatisfactory, admission should
be rejected. However, in the case of a new student who fails to pass a
medical re-check, if the diagnosis of a designated medical unit indicates that
he has chances of recovery after a short period of rest and cure-in this
way meeting the health requirements for new students stipulated by schools
of higher learning-admission of this student within a year will be
considered by the school.
Higher normal schools should conduct oral examinations once new
students are admitted. Those who stammer to a serious extent, or who are
deaf, or who are physically deformed shall not be qualified for admission.
Candidates taking examinations conducted by schools of higher learning
shall themselves pay all necessary fees. In regard to travelling expenses for
successful candidates who are in-service personnel, armymen transferred to
other professions, and this year's graduates from intermediate specialised
schools, all expenses shall be defrayed by their own units (or schools). Other
successful candidates, in principle, shall pay for their travelling expenses.
In individual cases, however, if certain successful candidates live compara-
tively far away from school, or if they cannot afford to pay for their own
travelling expenses because their families are really in financial difficulties,
they may apply for subsidies from the provincial, municipal and autonomous
regional education and administrative departments or from the student
enrolment organs in their localities. . .. [NCNA, June 10, 1965. SCMP
No. 3492.]

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