Work-Study Programs in Countryside : China Teaching Students Life Is More Than Books

BEIJING — Zhang Jinhai, 21, a student at the People’s University of China, is spending a month this summer in the countryside outside Beijing, observing a world he used to know about only from books and television.

“I’ve never been to a village before,” Zhang said. “This is the first time. In recent years, our country’s villages have developed a lot. We’ve studied them in class. But we haven’t seen them for ourselves. So I’m very happy to come.”

Zhang is one of about a million college students--half China’s total university enrollment--who are participating this summer in work-study or military training activities aimed at introducing a generation of examination-oriented young people to the realities of their country.

In the process, authorities hope to inoculate the participants against what is viewed as a dangerous susceptibility to Western ideas of political democracy and free speech, which are deemed inappropriate for China at this stage in its development.

The summer programs come in response to pro-democracy student demonstrations that shook the Communist Party Establishment last winter and provoked a backlash leading to dismissal of the reformist Communist Party general secretary, Hu Yaobang.

“Once students succeeded in passing examinations and enrolling in universities, they were so arrogant and self-centered that they thought they were already the backbone of the country,” Rong Hua, dean of students at Beijing Polytechnic University, said in an interview.

“The student turmoil exposed their weaknesses,” she added. “The proposals they supported and the slogans they shouted were quite out of touch with reality. So it was decided they should be given more opportunities to understand the living conditions of the people and the situation of the country.”

Some of the rhetoric surrounding the summer programs is reminiscent of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when students and intellectuals were sent to labor for years in the countryside, partly as punishment, partly because Mao Tse-tung distrusted intellectuals and believed they were too detached from the lives of the peasants.

“College students should go to basic units and go among workers, peasants and fighters,” state councilor Gu Mu declared in a recent speech to People’s University students who were setting off for the countryside. “We should carry on the glorious tradition of going deep among the masses and delving into reality.”

The resemblance to what happened during the Cultural Revolution is only superficial, however. Most of the students heading to the countryside are engaging in what amounts to field trips, and they generally perform little if any physical labor.

Zhang, the student visiting villages on the outskirts of Beijing, said he is not doing any physical labor at all.

“We talk to the cadres and the common people,” he explained. Sometimes young people from the villages in the area are invited to the township government office for conversations with the visiting students, “and we also go to the villages to talk to people in the fields or at home,” he said.

Yu Lixin, 19, who will be a third-year student in applied mathematics at Beijing Polytechnic University this fall, said she will go on a 15-day trip in August to the cities of Wuxi and Hefei, to participate in a statistics project aimed at analyzing samples of oil and natural gas.

“Mainly the work will be done in Hefei,” she said. “In Wuxi, we’ll have lectures on the same subject. . . . I think I’ll have time to do some sightseeing (in Wuxi, a city on the ancient Grand Canal) because it is a beautiful place.”

Before the work-study tour, Yu said, she will receive two weeks of military training.

“We’ll probably practice shooting, some night marching and formal marching,” Yu said. “I think life will be hard there, although not as hard as that of the soldiers.”

The students that Gu, the central government official, saw off at People’s University will also get a lot of exercise. But that is because they are on a 50-day bicycle trip through the countryside.

“The main purpose is to see village enterprises,” explained Yu Jiaqing, deputy party secretary and vice chairman of the Student Affairs Commission at People’s University. “But on the way they pass famous scenic spots like Taishan (a mountain and favorite tourist haunt) and Wuxi. They were very willing to go.”

More than 80 students applied for the 20 available slots on the tour, Yu said.

Field Trips Planned

Out of its total student population of about 5,000, People’s University has organized 10-day stints of military training for about 350 students and various types of work-study programs and field trips for another 650 students, Yu said. Roughly half of the remaining students are likely to make some sort of work-study or “social investigation” arrangements on their own, he said.

The official China Daily, quoting an article in China Education News, reported in late June that “more than 1 million college students will be given holiday tasks this summer to get practical experience and use their knowledge for the service of society.”

The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and the All-China Students’ Federation have called for students to provide technical advice and run training courses in 100 poor counties across the nation, according to the article.

“The State Education Commission has recently issued a circular saying that encouraging students to join outside activities during vacations and after-class time should be regarded as an important part of higher education,” it added.

But despite the backing of national authorities for such activities, universities sometimes face difficulties in making the arrangements.

Officials in charge of student activities at Beijing University--one of the hotbeds of student activism this winter--announced in May that about 10,000 students would be organized “to carry out social activities in poor and backward areas this summer vacation.”

Smaller Numbers

More than 2,000 Beijing University students--basically the entire incoming sophomore class--are spending much of the summer receiving military training at People’s Liberation Army bases, according to Huang Huaicheng, director of the office of the university president.

But beyond this, the university was able to make arrangements for no more than about 800 other students to visit rural areas, Huang said.

“They originally wanted to send a lot of people,” Huang said. “But later, when they contacted them by letter, the local places had difficulties in making arrangements, in putting them up. So the numbers are smaller.”

Military training also plays a prominent role in the activities arranged by Beijing Polytechnic University. Virtually the entire incoming sophomore and junior classes--about 700 students in each--are participating in two-week stints of military training during summer vacation, according to Rong, the dean of students.

The drive to give students more practical contact with society has also affected junior high and high school education.

Guangming Daily, an official newspaper aimed at China’s intellectuals, reported in March that Beijing city education officials had ruled that junior high schools must give students two weeks a year of “labor skills education” and that high school students must receive four weeks a year of such instruction, including at least two weeks of productive labor or field trips.

Beginning next year, students in Beijing who fail to take part in the required activities will not be allowed to take college entrance examinations, according to the announcement.

A Long Tradition

These requirements, however, have no direct effect on summer activities for high school students.

Wang Ruoye, head of administrative affairs for the Haidian district educational bureau in Beijing, said that some high schools in her district are sending students to the countryside this summer, but “they don’t labor--they just visit and observe.” The schools generally pay for transportation and lodging expenses, while the students cover the food costs.

“The better students, the student leaders, the cadres of the Youth League, the students with good marks and good characters are the first to be selected for these activities,” Wang explained.

Conscious attempts by intellectuals to mix with and understand ordinary society have a decades-long history in China, she added.

“Social investigation among the peasants was originally advocated by Mao Tse-tung in his writings,” she said. “During the Cultural Revolution, the meaning was distorted by the Gang of Four (Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and other radical leftist leaders). At that time, students and intellectuals were sent to villages to labor, and they couldn’t study. We won’t do something like that again now. The point is for students to have a happy and meaningful summer vacation.”

Huang, the Beijing University official, stressed that the summer activities are not some kind of punishment.

“In my opinion, the intention of the students (who demonstrated last winter) was good, because they wanted to promote the development of democracy in China,” Huang said. “But what they were doing was idealistic (rather than realistic). For students to be punished for this is absolutely wrong, and it’s not a good educational method.

“To punish someone by forcing him or her to do heavy labor is a method adopted by the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution. Even if you did this, the students wouldn’t accept it, and it would be counterproductive.

“They have great hopes for the future of the country, but they do not have enough understanding of the reality of the country now. Of course we hope they have opportunities--and we want to give them opportunities--to understand society.”