Humanities in China

The contemporary humanities disciplines in China formed after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Two departures defined the new humanities established in its wake. The first departure was from the school system of the Cultural Revolution. It was symbolized in the formal reinstatement of the prerevolutionary college entrance examination system in 1977. From 1966 to 1969, institutions of higher learning stopped enrolling students. Starting in 1970, in accordance with Mao Zedong's order for a revolution in education, some schools resumed enrolling students, but these students were not admitted directly from high school, as they had previously been. Rather, they were recruited from groups with a certain social experience such as workers, peasants, or soldiers. The university disciplines rehabilitated at that time were in branches of science and engineering linked to national development.

In 1977, under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping, this system of enrollment was abandoned. All those who had graduated from middle school during the decade-long suspension of the entrance exam could again participate in the higher education entrance exams. At the same time, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was founded, encompassing thirty-one institutes of research in the human social sciences. Its predecessor today, the philosophy and social science section of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), comprises thirty-five institutes and forty-five research centers.

Institutionally speaking, the organization of CAS is a combination of the Soviet-style institution from which it derives its basic framework and the Academia Sinica of the Republican period. The foundation of CASS, therefore, also symbolized China's attempt to distinguish itself from the Soviet system while still remaining within the bounds of Marxism. Within this new frame, disciplines such as philosophy, history, and literature were not separated off into the humanities, but rather constituted a peculiar element within the broader array of the social sciences. From the close of the 1970s through the 1980s, while individual scholars maintained a certain delineation between the humanities and the social sciences, it was nonetheless the case that the academic system did not clearly differentiate between the humanities and social sciences. The humanities was simply a specific category of the social sciences.

The second departure was the transformation of the traditional socialist classification of disciplines. According to Marxist theory, the social sciences (including the humanities) were collectively a superstructure and, thus, fell within the realm of ideology. However, the departments of CAS were deeply influenced by the arrangement of pre-1949 institutions such as Academia Sinica, Peking University, and Tsinghua University. The CAS faculty divisions were founded in 1955 but were built upon the so-called institutional adjustment undertaken in 1952, under the direction of Mao Zedong. Accordingly, Tsinghua University's humanities and social sciences departments were merged with Beijing University and then consolidated into the faculty division of philosophy and the social sciences at the CAS after its founding.

On account of their political positions, and despite their scholarly achievements, the older generation of scholars at the prerevolutionary universities was collectively moved into a department that did not enroll students. It was precisely these scholars, such as Gu Jiegang and Chen Yinke in the field of history, Yu Pingbo and Qian Zhongshu in the field of literature, and He Lin and Jin Yuelin in the field of philosophy, who were appointed to researcher positions within various offices of the division. Consequently, the older generation of scholars came to include not just prominent leftist scholars such as Guo Moruo, Fan Wenlan, and He Qifang, but also outstanding nonleftist scholars. After the CASS was formed in 1977, it was this generation together with the generation of scholars that had matured after 1949 who constituted the professional core of the social sciences and humanities in China.

Contemporary Trends

Throughout the twentieth century, China has experienced a continuous and violent antitradition movement. However, starting in the 1980s, this trend began to be replaced by a certain cultural conservatism about which it is hard to generalize. Within this new trend of traditionalism, there are two phenomenon that deserve attention. The first is the return of so-called national learning, which seeks to preserve the national essence...