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In 1924, Karl Radek, a Comintern agent in China, suggested establishing an advanced school to train cadres for political work.1 The next year, Radek's idea materialized in the Sun Yat-sen Communist University in Moscow. After the breakup of the Nationalist-Communist united front in 1927, a special class for training high-rank CCP cadres was opened at the university in July 1928. This special class in Moscow was the ancestor of the contemporary Central Party School (CPS) in Beijing.2 More than 80 years after that special class, the CPS is actively training Party cadres for national development in a political and social context radically different from what Radek had in mind in 1924.
The political importance of the CPS lies in the composition of its cadretrainees. They may be divided into four groups: (1) cadres judged to be promising for provincial or even national leadership in the future (enrolled in the cadre fostering program), (2) cadres already possessing decision-making powers in the provinces, prefectures, counties and enterprises (enrolled in training-byrotation program), (3) future political instructors in schools (enrolled in MA program), and (4) advanced theoreticians in the Party's formal ideology (enrolled in PhD programs).
This essay examines the present CPS curriculum, which took 17 years (198299) to evolve. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao believe that the key to maintaining party rule is fostering "high-quality leading cadres" (gaosuzhi ganbu ...). They have assigned the CPS the task of cultivating these successors, by teaching them both official ideology and modern science (including social science) and technology. To carry out Jiang and Hu's wishes, the CPS has undergone a secularization of sorts, by which I mean a reduction of social exclusiveness (the graduate college now accepts students of diverse social class backgrounds), an increase in curriculum and ideological diversity, and a turn toward social engagement (cadre-trainees are required to research practical problems in society).
Two recent studies of Party schools have emphasized the importance of these schools to the governing of China. David Shambaugh focuses on the organizational structure of the schools, 3 while Frank Pieke and Duan Eryu present an ethnographic account of the Yunnan Provincial Party School.4 By focusing on the curriculum of the CPS, I demonstrate how the CPS is infused with the values and political culture (including belief conflicts) of the national elites in the Party center.
My chief sources include official documents, Chinese writers' discussions on the CPS or the Party school system as a whole, and information accessed on the internet through simple searches on Google (Chinese language) and Baidu (a popular Chinese search engine). I also consulted a former student of the CPS who corresponded with current CPS students.
Official documents are of first-order importance in studying the CPS. The yearbooks (nianjian ...) of the CPS contain information on the school. Unfortunately, being "internal documents", the yearbooks are not easily obtainable for foreign researchers. I have been able to access the 1983, 1985, 1994, 1996 and 2001 editions. The CPS suspended publishing yearbooks after 2001. These yearbooks cover three critical turns of the CPS in the post-Mao period: the beginning of the "regularization" (secularization) program in 1982-83, the initiation of the drive to gain academic respectability in 1994-96, and Jiang Zeming's push to cultivate "high-quality leading cadres" to meet the challenges of globalization in 2000-01. In addition to the yearbooks, I have read hundreds of articles on the school available through the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI).5
Historical Background
I begin by giving a short historical account of the CPS, without which the significance of the school's transformations for the past 30 years cannot fully be understood or appreciated. Political controversies over curricula run through the history of the school like a red thread.
As stated at the outset, the CPS began in Moscow, under the Comintern's fosterage. The Soviet period (1925-32) was important in setting standards for what was appropriate for a high-level Party academy, particularly the basic curriculum (theories of Marxism-Leninism, history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and world politics). But Chinese Communist trainees also learned power politics at the Sun Yat-sen University, especially from the factional clashes among their Soviet instructors. Some of the teachers belonged to the "pedagogical faction", which stressed teaching theory. Their opponents were the "Party affairs faction". They wanted the school to focus on practical Party work.6 Similar divisions would haunt the CPS for much of its history.
As soon as the CPS moved to China and was on its own (first in Jiangxi base area in the 1930s and then in Yan'an in the late 30s and 40s), controversies over the curriculum arose. Initially, the Moscow-trained senior leaders controlled the CPS and copied the curriculum of the Sun Yat-sen Communist University, changing it slightly to fit the wartime context, but Mao Zedong challenged their pedagogy, accusing the Moscow-trained ideologues of irrelevance ("doctrinairism") during the Party Rectification Campaign of 1941-47. At the conclusion of the Rectification campaign, the CPS was briefly renamed "The Mao Zedong Party School of the CCP Central Committee".7 Mao eliminated almost all classes on Marxist classics and replaced these with his rendition of Party history and his strategy in conducting the war with the Nationalists. For Mao, the main duty of the CPS was to receive and transmit his own ideas, strategies and political "lines".
The CPS was shut down in 1947 due to the civil war. The CCP's victory in 1949 gave the Moscow-educated faction their second chance. In need of obtaining Soviet aid, Mao agreed to resurrect the CPS, albeit under the new name of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. The Moscow-trained Liu Shaoqi directed the Institute. Liu presided over Sovietization of the school. Soviet faculty dominated the school, imposing a curriculum heavy with Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist works.8
Starting in the mid-1950s, Mao increasingly saw the CPS as an impediment to establishing himself as the new Stalin and Beijing as the new Moscow.9 Mao's attitude led to the near-destruction of the school by his agent Kang Sheng during the Cultural Revolution.10 Kang accused the CPS of preferring Marxist theories to Mao's doctrine. For practical purposes, the CPS was shut down from 1965 to 1976.
The CPS was reopened in March 1977. From then to the 1990s, the CPS went through four phases: the initiation of curriculum secularization ("regularization") during Hu Yaobang's tenure as Party General Secretary, 1982-87; the suspension of curriculum renovation after Hu Yaobang was ousted in 1987; the restart of reforms at the school in general (1989-91); and the big push to secularize or modernize the curriculum (1992-p resent). I describe each phase briefly.
The "regularization" (zhengguihua ...) program at the CPS was designed to align the new curriculum with the needs of modernization. From then on, cadres had to meet the standards of being "revolutionary, young, knowledgeable and specialized" .... The school revamped its courses following the tripartite principle of one-third each to Marxian theories, modern knowledge of a particular subject, and science and culture. The revised syllabus was a political compromise. The traditional "old five" (Marxist philosophy, political economy, scientific socialism, Party history and Party-building) were retained. New courses such as "economic management", "jurisprudence", "international politics", "dialectics in nature and modern science and technology" and "foreign languages" were added. Younger cadres were required to be enrolled in "cadre-fostering" (peixun ...) classes which would last for three years, to ensure that they would have adequate time to learn.11
The "regularization" program was aborted when Hu Yaobang, a passionate advocate of modernization, was dismissed as the Party General Secretary. Hu's fall was precipitated by college student unrest in 1986-87, but the root cause of his ouster was persistent criticism by the conservative opposition, including Chen Yun, Wang Zhen, Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun. They feared the potential political consequences of secularization. After the crisis, the school's syllabuses returned to the "old fives". There would be no more generalknowledge courses to distract cadre-trainees from studying official ideology, or so the opposition thought.12
In early 1989, presumably prompted by collapsing socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the CPS rebounded. In March, Qiao Shi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, took over the directorship of the CPS. Qiao raised the hopes of the reformists at the school by articulating views similar to Hu Yaobang's. Qiao instructed the CPS to explore new perspectives in their work and keep an independent stand.13 Then, to the surprise of all, in September 1990 the Party center issued a directive to the nation's Party schools that signaled a return to the reform path.14 The new guideline restored the 198385 program; cadre-fostering was reinstated (albeit shortened to one year). Courses in science, technology, history and literature were again included in school curriculum. The document unprecedentedly suggested that Party schools should aim for scholarly respectability. Moreover, from then on Party schools were to perform three functions (known in Chinese as san wei ...): teaching, researching and advising.15
In 1992 Deng pushed the CPS secularization process further with his remarks at the end of his southern tour. Deng condemned "leftist" interference, called for untrammeled market-driven economic development, and stressed the need to promote education in science and technology. 16 Deng's denunciation of the "leftists" meant that it was safe for the CPS to incorporate Western learning into its coursework. The CPS then publicized a revised pedagogical guideline which promised to break through the "old five" template, restructure classes around Deng's "socialism with Chinese characteristics", reduce class hours in Marxist theories by half, and include new courses with topics like structural reforms of economy and politics, world economy and politics, international finance, capitalist economic development, and contemporary science and technology.17
In 1994, Jiang Zemin further expanded secularization at the CPS. Through the document entitled "The Party Center's Suggestions on Strengthening Party Schools in the New Situation" (May 1994), Jiang reiterated the essence of the 1990 notice on Party schools, especially pressuring them to strive for high academic quality. The memo suggested allowing faculty to have access to classified materials, encouraging interactions with regular universities in and out of China, and tying the career of a Party secretary (at sub-national levels) with his or her success in enhancing the quality of Party schools.18
By then, Hu Jintao had assumed the post of director of the CPS. Hu steadily changed the CPS to become more like a research university. The old "Department of Theory" was renamed the "Graduate Division". The structure of the school was streamlined and consolidated into six departments (philosophy, economics, scientific socialism, Party history, Party-building, and history and literature) and one research institute (the Marxism Research Institute). Later, the school created a seventh department - that of politics and law - and added the name of "Institute for International Strategic Studies" (guoji zhanl�e yanjiusuo ... hereafter IIS S) to the Marxism Research Institute (the new title indicated that the study of foreign knowledge was also a research focus). The unstated aim of these measures was to make the CPS competitive with famed traditional universities such as Beijing University or People's University. These measures indicated the CPS' further secularization and acknowledged that secular institutions of higher learning had regained a leading role in the Chinese intellectual community.
As Deng lay dying, Jiang pushed the CPS to meet the challenge of globalization. He targeted cadres in their 30s and early 40s, who would have another 20 years or so governing a China that was being rapidly opened to the West. He argued that they needed modern science, economics and management to deal with the complexity of the present world.19 Jiang's standards for senior cadres were: "theoretical mastery" lilun jichu...), "world vision" (shijie yanguang ...), "consciousness of strategy" (zhanl�e ... and "Party-mindedness" (dangxing xiuyang ...).20 Jiang directed the CPS and the Party schools as a whole to adopt a uniform syllabus composed of "the three basics" and "five contemporaries" (san jib en wu dangdai ...). The former referred to the doctrines of Deng, the thought of Mao, and Marxism. The latter referred to contemporary world economy, science and technology, law, military and national defense, and ideological trends. By 1999 these new courses were installed in the CPS and the rest of the Party schools of China.
Jiang's doctrine reflects Western literature on reinventing the state to meet the needs of globalization. Bertucci and Alberti, for example, argue that advanced information technology calls for highly skilled professionals in government services with "sound analytical and diagnostic capabilities", who "scan the environment for possible constraints or emerging opportunities; and [have] the ability to mobilize support for organizational change".21 The Odyssey of the CPS from its inception to the beginning of the 21st century confirms James Coleman's contention that educational policy is intensely political. 22 CCP �lite disputes over the CPS curriculum have reflected fundamental differences over the kind of state that China should have.
The Current CPS Curriculum
Present course structure at the CPS has been the joint production of the second and third generations of CCP national �lites. It combines the second generation leaders' demand to keep the original ideology of the Party and the third generation's desire to modernize by expanding significantly the proportion of empirical (Western) knowledge in the syllabus.
There are two primary categories of course taught at the CPS, those designed for the "principal classes" and those for the Graduate College. The principal classes are for cadres undergoing either training by rotation or cadre-fostering. The Graduate College trains MAs and PhDs in the eight departments established by Hu Jintao.
The Party center puts an overwhelming emphasis on the "principal classes" in order to align cadre outlooks with its own. There are three types of principal classes: (1) rotational trainings for provincial, prefectural and county cadres, (2) cadre-fostering classes for young and middle-age cadres, and (3) rotational or fostering classes for Xinjiang and Tibetan cadres. It is often said that the Party should prioritize cadre-fostering classes, since these groom political successors.23 In reality, senior provincial officials undergoing rotational learning were the vortex; these were the students that Jiang Zemin and Politburo Standing Committee members visited regularly.
Before presenting the courses, I must first describe briefly the procedure necessary to establish a course because, given the school's history, this is a politically precarious undertaking. Under Hu Yaobang, individual faculties had some freedom to prepare syllabuses on their own.24 The 1994 reforms at the CPS established the "collective course designing" system. This system includes two procedures for designing courses. The first employs the Party's campaign approach, and is used to react rapidly to directives from above. In such cases, the "standing deputy director" of the school (changwu fuxiaozhang ..., that is, the person in charge of daily affairs) takes charge. He or she organizes a special group of the faculty and staff and gives them comprehensive instructions on how to write the course syllabus and textbook. For instance, in the case of the "Contemporary world economy" class, the standing deputy director Zheng Bijian commanded the faculty to concentrate on the following 10 topics: industrial structure, world trade, finance, investment and transnational corporations, international economic organizations (including "games that nations play in international economics"), globalization of economic organizations, risks of and cycles in world economy, problems of sustained development, revolutions in technology and industry, and economic and political order in the world. The texts of this category of classes must be approved and signed by Hu Jintao before being taught to trainees.25
The second method of designing courses engages the formal administrative hierarchy of the CPS including, in descending order, the teaching and research department jiaoyanbu ...), the teaching and research office (jiaoyanshi ...), the teaching team (jiaoxue xiaozu ...) (teaching teams may not exist in small-sized departments) and individual faculty. The first two parties jointly decide the main topics to be covered, then the last two parties draft course syllabuses. These drafts must first be reviewed and signed by the head of the "office" and, finally, by the head of the department. In some cases, the head of office or department may consult outside experts on the submitted works. In cases where the head of an "office" is the syllabus writer, the department head must sign it. When a department head drafts a syllabus, his course outline must be read and signed by the heads of all other departments. Further, a new faculty member must trial-teach the new course at departmental or "office" meetings. The economics department instituted a competitive aspect to this method; new classes were posted publicly so that faculty could compete for the right to teach them.26
This way of designing classes has also been adapted to the times. For example, since 2003 the philosophy department has allowed individual instructors a higher degree of autonomy in determining course content. After the administration and the departments decide the course topics, the faculty of philosophy can compete over which classes it wishes to teach.27 In exceptional cases, individual faculty may initiate new courses. For example, in 1996 Professor Wang Guixiu, a highly visible scholar in China, suggested research and teaching on crisis management.28 The CPS apparently was not ready to include this topic in the curriculum until after the 1996-98 currency crisis in Southeast Asia, which brought down the Suharto regime in Indonesia. Subsequently, Jiang Zemin repeatedly expressed his concern over leading Party officials' ability to cope with unanticipated events in politics and society.29 Zheng Bijian announced in 2002 that crisis management would be incorporated into Jiang Zemin's "strategic thinking" class.30 Today, coping with crisis is a component of MA courses in policy analysis and "Education in thoughts and politics".
The Principal Classes
The syllabus of the classes for provincial cadres (shengji ganbu jinxiuban ...) can serve as a template for introducing the principal classes.31 These classes typically last for three months. They are composed of two broad categories. The first is "the three basics". The second is "strategic thinking and major practical issues". The rationale for scheduling the basics first is that everything in life has some ideological angle. As scholars specializing in institutional politics point out, political leaders everywhere strive to create a uniform interpretive order to give meaning to their decisions and actions and to give the impression of consistency and continuity.32 Certainly, the post-Mao CCP had been in dire need of a singular interpretive order.
Since 1992, the time spent on Marx and Lenin has been reduced to just twoand-a-half weeks. Class lectures consist of what the CPS administration judge to be the essential of Marx and Lenin's ideas. They encompass short excerpts from Capital, Political Economy, Marx and Engels on Socialism, Lenin's thoughts on Socialism in his old age, and lessons and experience of socialism in the Soviet Union. Instructors deliver short introductions to each topic, and allow plenty of time for students to read and study on their own.
The lecture topics on Mao Zedong thought are "The Scientific System and Historical Status of Mao's Thoughts", "Mao's Philosophy" and "Mao's Explorations of Building Socialism in China". Classwork devoted to the theory of Deng Xiaoping takes up the longest time, five weeks in total. Lectures include "Socialist Market Economy", "Problems of Development", "Rule by Law", "Cultural Constructions", "Party-Building", 'Western Theories of Economics" and 'Western Theories of Management". According to one senior writer of the texts on "the three basics", the central thesis is to prove that the theories of Marx, Mao and Deng formed "in one continuous line" (yimaixiang cheng-...)33 Moreover, "the three basics" are said fit with Marx's emphasis on practice and his thesis that learning is a process. The designers of "the three basics" hope that these classes will give students fundamental references on life and work, and enable them to make correct judgments.34
The content of the "Strategic Thinking" course usually includes "System Theory", "Strategy in International Relations" and "Theories of Technological Innovation and Application". 35 CPS Professor Li Jianhua included in his lectures on strategy concepts such as system science, structural-functionalism and cybernetics.36 The most popular lectures on strategy have been Friday morning speeches by senior Party or state leaders entitled "The Current Situation, State of the Nation, and Policy".
Participation in "the three basics" is required of all cadre-trainees at the CPS, not just the senior provincial cadres. There are also specific courses for prefecture and bureau-level cadres and for county committee secretaries, suggesting that the Party center has had particular concerns regarding governing at these levels. The prefecture-bureau officials must attend "Party-building and Party spirit and ethics" classes. Judging by the titles, corruption and indiscipline appear to be the two main topics; in addition, talks on the collapse of the Soviet Union are used as a warning to the students. County Party committee secretaries have to take additional classes on practical economic matters, such as finance, taxation, medium-and-small firms, agricultural development and local administration. These county directors also study the art of leadership, especially in relation to policy-making, personnel management, communication and system theory.
Young and middle-aged cadres, who are selected by the powerful Central Organization Department to go to the CPS as potential future provincial or even national leaders, have year-long cadre-fostering classes to learn "the three basics" and "strategic thinking". Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao justified the increase in empirical courses by playing up Deng's ideas. Of the 39 weeks of instructions, 50, 24, 12 and 12 per cent of time was spent on Deng, Marx/Lenin, Mao and Jiang Zemin respectively. The syllabuses for cadre-fostering classes are naturally more comprehensive. Instructions on Marx/Lenin, for instance, include not only Marx and Engels' classics (such as the origin of Marxism, theories of values, surplus values and reproduction) but also special lectures on contemporary capitalism, lessons from the demise of the Soviet Union and a survey of world history (specifically: rise of capitalism in England, birth of republicanism and the French revolution, evolution of the American political system, the Meiji restoration and the modernization of Japan). The classes on Mao incorporate Chinese history in the late 19th century (the Opium War, the Qing dynasty's Westernization movement, and the One Hundred Days' Reforms). Instruction in Deng's doctrine contains eight weeks on economic restructuring and development, which includes "Survey of Western Economic Theories", "Western Theories of MacroEconomics", 'Western Theories of Micro-Economics", "Scientific Theories of Management" and "Modern Theories of Management". Deng was not known for having much to say about political reforms, especially after the student prodemocracy movement which led to the resignation of Hu Yaobang in 1987. Nevertheless, trainees in the cadre-fostering classes have to spend four weeks on Deng's "Theories of Democracy, Law and Cultural Construction". In addition, there are special talks, such as: "Experience and Lessons of Democracy in the Former Eastern Europe and Soviet Union", "Post-Cold War Theories of International Relations in the West", "Administrative Rules, Regulations and Implementations" and "Laws on Finance and Stocks". In sum, the Deng "theory" classes are a grab-bag of whatever the current Party center deems to be relevant to effective governing.
An integral part of cadre -training as a whole is connection with social reality. For provincial and prefecture-bureau cadres, a day or two of touring particular institutions, such as hospitals, factories, residential districts, villages or industrial parks satisfies the requirement. County Party committee secretaries and students in cadre-fostering programs must carry out "social practice", lasting two weeks for the former and three weeks for the latter. Trainees do empirical research and then return to the CPS to compose a report, earning academic credits. A historic breakthrough in "social practice" occurred in 2000, when Hu Jintao allowed one class to go to Japan for ten days of "investigation", ostensibly for the purpose of cultivating their world view. Furthermore, all students must write a graduating thesis on a topic that exemplifies "strategic thinking". Finally, all trainees must take exams. Though the provincial classes are exempt, the rest of the cadres are tested on "the three basics". Moreover, the test for prefecture-bureau cadres is open-book, but the final examination for county secretaries and cadre-fostering students is closed-book.
The above courses were designed for ethnically Han cadres. However, the CPS has had a history of training ethnic-minority cadres, especially those in Xinjiang and Tibet. By 2008, Xinjiang cadre-fostering classes had existed for 52 years and those for Tibetans for 27 years. The classes for these two ethnic minorities correspond closely to that of the Han cadre-fostering students, and are designed for both short (four-and-a-half months) or long (ten-and-a-half months) terms, but there are special topics in the syllabuses for both groups. For instance, the topic "Marxism on Nationality and Religion" has been added to "the three basics" in both the Xinjiang and Tibetan classes. There are also lectures on "Local History". Chinese history is included in lectures on Mao's ideology. It is worth noting that Chinese history is presented differently to Xinjiang cadres and to Tibetan cadres. To the former, teachers play up the role of the Chinese state. The thesis is that China has always been a unitary state, as illustrated by lecture titles like "The Formation and Consolidation of Unified Dynasties", "Crises in Ancient Chinese Dynasties and Their Responses", "The Causes and Lessons of China's Taking a Beating in Modern Times" and "The Path of Chinese Modernization". In contrast, the presentation of Chinese history to Tibetans stresses Chinese society and culture. The lecture headings for Tibetan trainees include "The Formation and Development of Ancient Chinese Civilization", "The Rise and Decline of Feudal Chinese Empires" and "The Formation of Semi-Feudal and Semi-Colonial Chinese Society in Modern Times".
In addition to these regular classes, the Party at all administrative levels organizes short-term classes at the CPS for topics of immediate concern to the respective Party authorities. At various times, the Party center has held seminars dealing with China's admission to the WTO, corruption, the state's plan of "Building New Villages", policy on religion, "Scientific View on Development" and "Democracy, Socialist Style". Local governments have contracted with the CPS to sponsor seminars, such as "Female Leadership in Enterprises", "Fostering Cadres at Basic Levels", "Prospects of Sustained Local Development" and "The Training of Young Marxists".37 In recent years, short one-month classes on "Fostering Cadres in the Western Region" have been convened two or four times a year. Furthermore, starting in 2001, the CPS has opened its doors to private businessmen, who pay high fees to attend special classes on the ideology and policy of the Party center.
In 2004, following Hu Jintao's emphasis on enhancing the Party's governing capabilities, a variant of Jiang Zemin's theme of fostering "high-quality leading cadres", the Central Organization Department and Central Propaganda Department jointly publicized a directive on restructuring cadre-training in Party schools. This communiqu� was aimed specifically at increasing opportunities for students to do policy research, either on their own or jointly with the faculty ("research" meaning turning class topics into practical guides for action). With the exceptions of classes for county Party secretaries and ethnic minorities, the rest of principal classes were divided into "A" and "B" groups, the former for those who had already taken "the three basics". The trainees in "A" groups were to concentrate on research, whereas the "B" groups would study all the courses described above. Provincial cadres in the "A" group were directed to research "social development", "economic construction and reform of the economic system", "political construction and reform of the political system", "cultural construction and reform of the cultural system" and "Party-building and the Party's historical experience". Since all of these are broad topics, it is up to individual students to narrow them down to a specific research focus. In this way, the cadre-trainees could bring their experience to bear on their study. For instance, one provincial "A" class decided to investigate "coping with 'events of a mass nature'" (mass protests), "reform of the land ownership system" and "stabilization of the division of labor between worker and peasant".38
The 2004 reform also targeted teaching methods. Readings were divided into required and recommended. A promise was made to increase the number of elective courses. Methods of instruction adopted some American practices, such as case studies (as used in American medical or law schools) and the participantobserver method. Above all, faculties were urged to bring the fruit of their research into their teaching.39
Graduate College
The graduate college of the CPS has evolved from a handful of students enrolled in "theory classes" in 1981 to the present MA and PhD programs. The graduate college forms the intellectual core of the academy. The college has been authorized by the central government to grant MA degrees in 28 subjects (including Marxist Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Technology, Chinese Philosophy, Foreign Philosophy, Political Economy, World Economy, Scientific Socialism and the World Communist movement, Jurisprudence, Political Science, CCP History and Building, International Politics, Sociology, and Marxist Theories and Education in Thought and Politics) and PhD degrees in 22 subjects (including Marxist Philosophy, Political Economy, Scientific Socialism and the World Communist Movement, CCP History and Building, and International Politics). The Chinese government allows universities to grant degrees not only in major disciplines (referred to, in Chinese, as "first-level study subjects") but also in sub-fields within each discipline ("second-level study subjects"). For instance, one may earn an MA degree in philosophy, but also in Marxist philosophy, foreign philosophy or ethics. One may earn an MA in economics, but also in political economy or international economy.
The MA program originally cultivated Party school teachers, but nowadays its graduates usually work as political instructors in Party, state or educational institutions. The doctoral program is modeled after the British or European tutorial system, and students are channeled to individual professors according to their research interests; the number of PhD students admitted each year varies according to faculty availability.
The MA curriculum is divided into four segments.40 First, there are two required courses in ideology for all students: "Marxism" and "Education in Party Spirit". Every student must take a foreign language course (with the language depending on the student's specialization) and the social survey course. The second segment of the curriculum contains the fundamentals of the student's major discipline. The third includes the required courses of a student's sub-field. The fourth consists of elective courses, which are divided into "sub-field elective courses" and "elective courses not closely related to the student's sub-field". MA students must select one course outside his or her sub-field. The overwhelming majority of these "out-of-sub-field" courses are introductory.
The MA classes as a whole are of four kinds. First, there are courses, such as political science, law and sociology, designed to fill the void in the traditional offerings. When these courses were first offered, nationalist sentiments were aroused because so many of the new subjects were imports from the West. Thus this group of courses came to include Chinese philosophy, Chinese ethics and Chinese national history (not just Party history). As is often the case, the perception of "strong" outside cultural influences provoked defenders of the "weak" home culture to consolidate their territory.41 The second kind of course includes key courses from the past that have been almost completely restructured or redefined, so that very little of the old content remains, as in topics like philosophy and economics. New ideas from outside, mostly from the West, dominate these classes. The current economic classes at the CPS, for example, virtually subvert traditional Marxist political economy.42 The third kind of course includes those that underpin each discipline. Even highly political majors such as Party history, Party-building and "Education in Thought and Politics" require students to take basic methodological or conceptual classes, such as historiography for Party history and political science for Party-building. Fourth are what I call "rampart" classes. These classes were established to heed Deng's caution that the Party must not forsake "the old venerable ancestor". If there is one principle that unites the MA curriculum, it is instrumentality. The course planners wished to incorporate those Western subjects that were judged beneficial to the Party's goal of maintaining its ruling position.
The main thrust of the PhD program is research (as defined by Party ideologues). 43 Since the post-Mao reforms have brought secularization in every aspect of Chinese society, the Party has been on the defensive, ideologically speaking. The "research" of the doctoral students at the CPS is designed to enable the Party to regain ideological initiative. The national leadership pins their hopes on doctoral students and their tutors at the CPS finding a neo-Marxist theory or "Sinicized Marxist" theory to constrain imported Western learning.
PhD students take two required courses: "Marxism and Contemporary Social Trends of Thought" and "Social Survey". Depending on student specialty, they must also become proficient in one or two foreign languages. The rest of the course work is divided into a limited number of theory classes which survey the student's specialized field, and a larger number of "courses pertaining to research". Elective courses are limited to one or two.
PhD curriculums are more specialized than the MA ones, covering most subdisciplines in a given field but little outside that. For instance, political science in the PhD program encompasses political science, Party history, Party-building, scientific socialism and international politics. Political economy covers all different branches of economics. However, if one looks closely at the specific research guides in each area of study, the school's objectives are, more often than not, utilitarian. The so-called research focuses provide the national leadership with modern-sounding concepts or frames for embellishing their policy programs.
The planners of the PhD program seem to have followed five rules to channel students' work: references, geographic differentiation, cultural relativism, concept (or theory) stretch and systematization. The rule of references directs students to study closely a number of subjects taken from Western social sciences or humanities in order to explore their usefulness to the Party. Research foci have included the relationship between philosophy and modernization, the development of German philosophy (useful for revising Marxism; Habermas has been a campus speaker), the fate of socialism in both Western and developing nations, market mechanisms, short- and long-term impacts of economic globalization, macro-economic controls, economics of corporations, interactions between the rule of law and politics, political parties, and lessons of political education elsewhere in the world.
The rule of references is paired with that of geographic differentiation. As Lasswell points out, one common way for states to control unsettling foreign influence is to claim that its validity is restricted to the country of its origin.44 Doctoral students at the CPS are directed to design "Chinese theory of human rights", "Chinese socialist democracy", "Chinese theory of power checks and balances" or "Socialist political culture with Chinese characteristics" (see Table).
The rule of cultural relativism further restricts foreign knowledge. The curriculum designers use this rule flexibly. In "Sinification of Marxism", culture is employed to justify revising the old ideology in order to connect with Chinese and world reality. Culture also helps the Party to restrict applications of Western political thought that are judged threatening to the Party's rule. Not surprisingly, the CPS administration leaves out culture when discussing economics and international politics.
Concept stretch applies almost exclusively to Marxist theories. Students are told to expand and deepen Marxism, to make revised Marxism once more the theory of everything that had entranced the founding fathers of the CCP.
Finally, systematization is what the CPS leadership stresses in Party history. Students are advised to connect the following three aspects of Party history: (1) Deng's "socialism with Chinese characteristics", (2) the experience of the CCP' s rule, and (3) the evolution of the CCP' s ideology. A political party is its history. Against the background of the extensive rewriting and falsification of CCP history since the 1940s, course planners ask students to construct a meaningful narrative of the Party history.
David Shambaugh's content analysis of CPS journals finds that there has been decline in coverage of Marxian theories and Party history, but subjects dealing with economics, administration, Party organization and international relations have increased. Politics and law have been downplayed.45 My study confirms this finding and gives a reason - instrumentalism. Modern knowledge is taught in the hope that it will be useful to maintaining Party rule.
I must emphasize that the course syllabuses have been in a fluid state. Three forces contribute to this fluidity. First, since 2000 there have been generational changes of departmental heads. More and more departments are now being led by faculty born in the 1950s or even later. These new departmental chairs are, on the whole, more disposed to accept new knowledge than those born in the 1930s. The second contributing force is the legacy of questioning spurred by the prolonged disputes regarding the CPS curriculum from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The core of the curriculum, including Party history, Party -building, political economy and philosophy has never consolidated. Third, since the "regularisation" program in the early 1980s, the chief reference of the CPS has been regular Chinese universities; the latter, in turn, follow the lead of major universities in the West, America in particular. Since the CPS wishes to be competitive academically, it must implement continuous pedagogical change. In a recent article posted on the website of the CPS, the vice director of the Hunan Provincial Party School stated that Party schools must, as regular universities, put equal emphasis on the laws of the market and the laws of education.46
We should expect steady changes in the syllabuses of virtually all the departments at the CPS in the years to come. Senior faculty members of the philosophy department have advocated incorporating insights from systems theory, information theory, cybernetics theory, humanism and post-modern values into Marxian courses.47 Political science professors, especially those in their 30s, have been receptive to a whole range of American concepts or approaches including political psychology, political culture and quantification. The two most problematic fields, Party history and Party-building, are now led by people with cosmopolitan outlooks. Professor Guo Dehong, chair of the Party History department, boldly affirms that Party history belongs to history, not politics. He decries past distortions of Party history and wants to connect Party historiography with society, particularly Chinese modernization.48 Professor Wang Changjiang, one of the most outstanding and visible CPS scholars, chairs the Department of Party-Building. Wang pioneered teaching about comparative political parties at the CPS. "Party-building" was severely damaged by Mao's ideological politics. To date, Party members show little interest in studying Party-building. The key questions of "what kind of Party should we have and how may we construct such a Party?" remain unresolved. 49 Wang's advocacy of learning from foreign political parties has received wide support. In 2004, for example, the former head of the "External Liaison Department" of the Central Committee of the CCP called for the study of foreign parties in order to improve the CCP.50 The department of Scientific Socialism is now led by Yan Shuhan, whose research focuses on globalization and contemporary capitalism. Yan replaced Zhao Yao (born 1932), an arch-conservative who compiled a 1280-page anthology on Marxism, in which he deemed that the world today is witnessing "transition from moribund capitalism to rising socialism".51 A group of trainees submitted research on the topic of education in thought and politics that called on the CPS to adapt to Chinese youth's preferences for intellectual autonomy, as well as cultural pluralism, fluidity and differentiation.52 These examples demonstrate the potential for continuous changes in CPS curricula.
Conclusion
CPS curricular development is aimed at creating Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao's ideal cadre, who may be described, for lack of a short suitable term, as a "partisan and modern manager". Such a person fully employs his or her talents, scientific knowledge and technical skills to safeguard the Party's position (what Jiang refers to as hongse jiangshan ... - the Red realm),53 make it prosper, watch out for threats and always be ready to exploit opportunities for development. These leaders resemble professional managers of Western corporations, whose job is to make the corporations flourish. In contrast, the ideal cadre in Mao's era was primarily a tough-minded executor of Mao's will; the most-prized skill of Maoist cadres was enthusing the masses. Whereas Mao's cadres did not need much modern education, Jiang's do, since they now operate in an environment of decentralization and globalization. Each cadre model is rooted in its respective Zeitgeist: warfare in Mao's time (Mao's preoccupation even after 1949) and modernization in Jiang and Hu' s era.
The objective of pedagogy at the CPS is to align the students' identities and beliefs with those of the Party center. The situation again resembles modern business corporations, where managers' loyalty to corporate owners is vital. While designing the curriculum is by and large an intellectual undertaking, shaping cadre-trainees' beliefs and values is a matter of human subjectivity and character. Both the Party center and the CPS administration face the problem of "taking the horse to the river, but not being able to make it drink".
In the absence of any objective study on teaching or training effectiveness at the CPS, I can relate only the fragmentary testimonies of CPS chief executives. They present a problematic picture. Former vice director Zheng Bijian repeatedly criticized students for only paying lip service or for formalism.54 Zheng also reported ideological indiscipline on the part of the faculty, who, Zheng related, "produced noise" (politically incorrect speech) in classrooms.55 Professor Yang Chungui, one of the architects of curriculum improvement, disclosed that trainees found it difficult to connect "the three basics" with reality.56 Zheng Bijian revealed that most students do not believe that Deng's doctrine had any relation to Marxist theory as "the three basics" claimed.57 Former vice director Wang Jiamiao exposed a widespread attitude among the students that ideological education was useless and irrelevant; they felt that teaching modern knowledge was more important.58
Pieke's ethnographic account of the Party school in Yunnan Province reveals that the above-mentioned trainee attitudes also exist in that school. He reports that students there regard teachings at the school as irrelevant to their work and that they are more interested in learning modern knowledge than ideology. Students are generally passive. Pieke stresses the informal functions that attendance at the Party school fulfill, including social networking and affirmation of cadre identity and status. In my opinion, one should note also the negative informal functions, such as the production of cynicism and scorn. My informant told of a private conversation that he had with a student who was very strongly recommended by his provincial Party secretary; this cadre-trainee stated that the present Chinese political system "is absurd compared with the American system". Further, in a 1996 faculty conference at the CPS, the vice chairman of the economic department reported the view widespread among cadres that there was nothing Marxian about the Chinese political system; it was nothing more than Party-rulecum-capitalism .59
Many contemporary social and cultural conditions have made successful CPS pedagogy difficult. Trainees at the CPS are in their 30s or 40s; they are not youth with identities in flux but have relatively fully formed belief systems, identities and ethical codes for life. In addition, for persuasion to be effective, the credibility of the persuader is of primary importance. No reformist leaders, from Deng to Hu, can claim authority in Marxist theories.
For now, the lack of a meaningful ideological common ground between the Party center and the cadres may not be problematic for Party rule, since the momentum of development unites the two. What the Party center cannot be certain of is cadres' political loyalty in the time of a major socio-economic crisis. Whether the center's investment in the CPS will pay off in such a scenario is uncertain.
[Author Affiliation]
Alan P. L. Liu*
[Author Affiliation]
* I owe a deep research debt to Peter Chung-tat Peng of the Davidson Library at UCSB for helping me to acquire various Chinese materials. I am grateful to Professor Szu-yin Ho of National Chengchi University in Taiwan for making the clipping files at the university available to me.
[Author Affiliation]
Alan P. L. Liu is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He taught Chinese politics at UCSB from 1969 to 2004.
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