, (2) industry, (3) science and technology, and (4) national defense. The concept was first introduced in the Third Five Year Plan, which covered the time period 1966 1970. Under this approach to education, science and technology have been accorded a priority over the humanities, and vocational and technical skills training have been emphasized. Beginning in 1978, the country's intellectuals, the academic elite, have been encouraged to pursue research in support of the Four Modernizations. The country's academic elite has also been required to comply with the Chinese Communist Party's four cardinal principles, which are to (1) uphold socialism, (2) uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and (4) uphold Marxist Lenist Maoist Thought.5
Education suffered grievously during the Cultural Revolution, with the result that the country fell behind significantly in the attainment of its long term goals associated with education. Since 1980, however, policy has accorded a priority to education over most other societal endeavors. Since 1980, achievement has served as the basis for both admission to and advancement in the educational system. Subsequent to 1980, political activism has not been considered as important evidence of academic performance.
The laws of motion of socialism envisioned evolutionary development.6 Had Lenin lived longer, or had some individual of a character different from that of Stalin succeeded Lenin, the world might have been provided with an opportunity to learn whether or not the postulated evolutionary motion of socialism would lead to the socialist ideal communism, and a stateless society. As it happened, however, Stalin changed the character of the socialist experiment by (1) implementing a rigid centralized control over all aspects of national life in the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, however, the evolutionary laws ...