In the Lap of Tigers: The Communist Labor University of Jiangxi Province

(Paperback)

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Founded in the forested mountains of Chinas remote Jiangxi Province in 1958, the Communist Labor University, along with some 100 branch campuses, introduced uneducated farmers and peasants to basic agricultural science and farming techniques through an innovative work-study program until 1980. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, John Cleverley here explores the inner workings of this unique Chinese institution and the direct personal involvement in its affairs by the nations key communist leaders, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Deng Xiaoping.

The community would survive the dictates of political agriculture, famine and pestilence, and the Cultural Revolution, thus mirroring higher education's own cycle of expansion, contraction, and division. Yet the university could not avoid the bitter factional politics and deadly power plays of the 1970s. Open to the charge that it was a utopian experiment, another of Mao's great follies, its undoing was part of the larger canvas of Chinas shift from a Maoist vision to Dengs philosophy of pragmatic socialism. This fascinating story illuminates the internal and external politics of an innovative educational enterprise from both an institutional and personal perspective. In the process, the book underscores the larger issues of educational reform and political and social change in China.

Reviews

A well-written book. * The China Journal *
The book is engagingly written. * Labor History *
This book can help readers understand Chinese politics or education before 1980. * History of Education Quarterly *
Specialists on Chinese education and on modern China more generally will welcome this volume for the new insights and understandings it contributes to the study of Chinese socialist development, and the role of higher education within that development. Comparative educators will find it fills important gaps in knowledge within the wider historical project of socialist higher eduction development. * Comparative Education *
Cleverley's treatment of the history of the Communist Labour University is detailed, effective and quite readable. * Pacific Affairs *
Cleverley's book is a model of educational history. With a deep and surefooted understanding of his subject he takes the reader lucidly and impartially through the permeations of power and ideology. -- Richard Davis, University of Tasmania * History Of Education Review *
Offers an interesting glimpse into attempts to translate revolutionary ideology into meaningful, pragmatic, and mass-based educational actualization. As such, the Gongda story, as narrated in this volume, merits attention as a daring and even noble facet of twentieth-century Chinese societal transformation. * The Historian *

Author Bio

John Cleverley is honorary professor, University of Sydney, and managing director of Asian Overseas Services Party Ltd.