University Enrollment and State Admission Policy in China : The Swing between Redness and Expertness

This paper intends to consider the changes in the system of student recruitment in higher education in China from the viewpoint of the relation between "redness" (prominence in socialist ideology) and "expertness"(prominence in expertise). It approaches the question by a method of tracing in detail and analyzing the changes in the Regulation concerning the Student Recruitment to the Institutions of Higher Education from 1952 to 1965. In analysis, provisions for favorable treatment of workers, peasants etc. are taken as indicators of "redness" and provisions seeking for better achievement and quality of applicants as indicators of "expertness".

The system of student recruitment throughout the period can be divided into three parts. And this paper is composed of these three major parts comparable to the division of time, i.e., the Period of the First Five-Year Plan (1953-57), the Period of the "Great Leap Forward" (1958-59) and the First Half of 1960's.

As a conclusion, if we try to exclusively define "redness" or "expertness", we might fall into an error of effectively splitting their dialectical relation. It is true that the two concepts can be compared to twisted red and white strings but their thickness became unequal from time to time.