Conflicts and Student Activism Under Mao in the 1950s

• In Event: Solidarity and Backlash Effects From Protests

Abstract

The socialist system established in China in the 1950s was a system under which the Party and the State controlled the society tightly. However, the institutionalization of political control at the grass-roots level met with tensions and conflicts. The student protests in 1957 marked the culmination of such tensions and conflicts. Under the Mao’s policy of “The Hundred Flowers Campaign”, student protests took place on the university and college campuses in many cities. Why did student protests take place on such a large scale across China? What factors motivated these protests? And, how did university and college students think and act at that time? These questions remain unexplored.

This paper examines students activism in Chinese colleges and universities. It argues that most student protesters in colleges and universities had been discontented with the university administration after it had been bureaucratized through a series of political campaigns after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Based on the local archives and unpublished personal archives (including diaries and study notes), the paper explores the process of how tensions and conflicts between the university administration and the students were brought about by political campaigns, and documents how ordinary students thought and acted in the widespread protests of 1957. Through such an analysis, the paper aims to reveal a complex picture of Chinese students activism under Mao and contribute to the literature on conflicts research and comparative communism studies.

Author

• Zheng Haolan, Keio Univeristy, Stanford University