Abstract
As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy.
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Notes
See, for example, Liang (2013), a cadre training textbook, which opens with dozens of examples of successful governance techniques drawn from the Chinese imperial past.
In the late imperial period, literate women, excluded from the examinations, sometimes founded “heterodox” religious sects that could, especially if persecuted by the authorities, turn against the state. But such movements alarmed the gentry, who responded to the perceived threat by mobilizing local militia in opposition (Naquin 1977; Kuhn 1970).
Celebrated examples of individual remonstrators include Qu Yuan (a third century BC official from the state of Chu who committed suicide to protest rampant corruption) and Hai Rui (a sixteenth century Ming Dynasty official who was dismissed, and later reinstated, after criticizing the emperor for dereliction of duty).
Mao describes the impact of “new learning” on his political awakening in Snow (1972)
The seminal work on the phenomenon of massification is Trow (1973), who distinguishes among “elite” higher education, which enrolls under 15% of the eligible age cohort, “mass” education which enrolls 15–50%, and “universal” education which enrolls over 50%.
Washington Post (February 12, 2012).
The former and current General Secretaries, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, are both graduates of Tsinghua, while the current Premier, Li Keqiang, is a Peking University alumnus.
习近平在北京大学师生座谈会上的讲话(全文) http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-5/05/content_2671258.htm
Interview with Party Vice-Secretary for Student Affairs, Tsinghua University (2015).
It could be that students are simply more apt to give answers they believe to be “politically correct,” and that their responses do not reflect their actual views, but in either case their replies indicate an unusually high level of compliance or “educated acquiescence.”
Ministry of Civil Affairs, ed., 2017 Statistical Bulletin of Social Service Development (2017年社会服务发展统计公报). https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/1052864159313028779.html
Application guidelines and lists of state-supported projects can be found at the website of the National Planning Office: http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/n/2014/1211/c219469-26187444.html
“Innovations in Higher Education: Singapore at the Competitive Edge,” World Bank Technical Paper, no. 222 (1994).
Taiwan and South Korea did eventually democratize, of course, but their impressive economic takeoffs were engineered by authoritarian regimes that appreciated the instrumental use of higher education for such purposes.
“Kim Il Sung University, Seventy-Year History,” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, no. 729 (October 2016): 22–29; “Kim Il Sung University Greets its 70th Anniversary,” The Pyongyang Times (October 1, 2016): 2.
http://www.ryongnamsan.edu.kp/univ/intro/history/develop; “University Aims to be World’s Top-class Institute,” The Pyongyang Times (October 1, 2016).
See also Vora (2015).
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Acknowledgments
This paper benefitted greatly from comments by participants in the Holbrooke Forum on Authoritarianism in Global Context held at the American Academy in Berlin in the summer of 2015, especially Martin Dimitrov, Linda Cook, Nara Dillon and Natalie Koch. In addition, Peter Bol, Nancy Hearst and Benjamin Read offered many helpful suggestions.
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Perry, E.J. Educated acquiescence: how academia sustains authoritarianism in China. Theor Soc 49, 1–22 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09373-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09373-1