The Critical Impact of the Registration of Unemployed ...

Research Report

The Making of Zhishifenzi: The CriticalImpact of the Registration of UnemployedIntellectuals in the Early PRC*

Eddy U

ABSTRACT Existing research on Chinese intellectuals naturalizes the category, whichis a social construction whose membership, attributes and political significance stemfrom state and society interactions. Recounting an urban registration campaign forunemployed intellectuals, this article describes the critical moment in which theCommunist Party institutionalized its definition of zhishifenzi and local tensionsappeared between officials and intellectuals. Due to high unemployment, statespecifications and administrative disorganization, the campaign absorbed formerKuomingtang agents, expelled state employees, non-specialists, housewives, socialdeviants and legally unqualified individuals into the intellectual category. It rein-forced longstanding Communist prejudices that intellectuals were politically, morallyand professionally suspicious. The article suggests that research on Chinese intellec-tuals may break new ground, theoretically and empirically, by focusing upon socialpractices that reproduce the intellectual category beyond the elite level.

Overshadowed by the Three Anti and Five Anti Campaigns, the early1950s registration of unemployed intellectuals (shiye zhishifenzi) in urbanChina is not well documented in Western scholarship. It was initiated bythe state to tap expertise and relieve unemployment, and involved lessfanfare and disruption of urban activities than the other campaignsattacking malfeasance in the party-state and economic sector. However, itwas no less momentous to the development of urban politics and cultureduring the Mao decades. For one thing, the mobilization to registerunemployed intellectuals, which involved official specifications, institu-tional promotions and individual evaluations of eligibility, became acollective exercise redefining Chinese intellectuals (zhishifenzi) from asmall educated elite to a broad census category of “mental workers.”1

* I thank Glen Dudbridge, Peter B. Evans, Neil Fligstein, Thomas B. Gold and Wen-hsinYeh for advice. I am grateful to Robert J. Culp, Mark McNicholas, Allison Rottman and LingShiao for critical comments and suggestions. The Shanghai Municipal Archives providedinvaluable research assistance. The University of California at Berkeley provided financialsupport.

1. The term zhishifenzi appeared in literary circles in the 1920s. It was preceded by the termzhishijieji (intellectual class), which referred to the educated elite in the city and countrysideor, more narrowly, the scholars and writers who participated in political and cultural debates.Critical efforts to elaborate solutions for the political and cultural crises at the time generateda literature that prescribed, described and criticized the roles of zhishijieji and zhishifenzi. Thisliterature is examined in Vera Schwarz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals andthe Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press,1986). Later, some schoolteachers and students also described themselves as zhishifenzi.

The China Quarterly, 2003

101The Making of Zhishifenzi

Secondly, the registration deepened the Communists’ prejudices againstintellectuals as it absorbed into the social category a large number offormer Kuomintang agents and people with minimal professional skills.Thirdly, poor organization during the registration enabled unqualifiedindividuals to sign up illicitly as unemployed intellectuals and exacer-bated the Communists’ distrust of the entire group of registrants. In short,the early 1950s registration of unemployed intellectuals not only popular-ized and institutionalized the Communist definition of zhishifenzi but alsoreinforced a deep-seated Communist prejudice that the group was com-posed of socially untrustworthy people.2

Existing research on Chinese intellectuals under Communist rule fo-cuses upon the elite, that is writers, scholars and scientists. In the main,these people are portrayed as modern Confucian literati with obligationsto censure political rulers or as heirs to the May Fourth tradition ofdissent who share modernist outlooks and desires for intellectual auton-omy. Although this analytical framework has helped China scholarsuntangle the web of tensions and co-operation between the state andzhishifenzi, it has “naturalized” the social group.3 On one hand, the

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However, the extent to which the terms zhishijieji and zhishifenzi circulated outside theeducated population is unclear. Zhishifenzi appears in Guoyu cidian (National LanguageDictionary) published by the authoritative Commercial Press in 1937 as (1) “individuals fromany social class who have ‘considerable’ (xiangdang) knowledge and learning,” and (2)“individuals from non-worker backgrounds who direct the workings of society.” But the termdoes not appear in Baihua cidian (Vernacular Dictionary) or Guoyin changyong cihui(Common Phrases in Standard Chinese) published by the same press in 1938 and 1949respectively. It appears in Zhongguo renmin shuyu cidian (Dictionary on Terms andTerminology of the Chinese People) (Shanghai: Taipingyang chubanshe, 1950), which waspublished with an expressed purpose of “introducing” new terms and phrases. It also appearsin other dictionaries published after the Communists took over Shanghai. See Gongnong-bingxueshang jiben zhishi xuexi shouce (Basic Knowledge Handbook for Workers, Peasants,Soldiers, Students and Merchants) (Shanghai wengong shudian, 1950); Xin mingci shouce(Handbook of New Terms) (Shanghai changfeng shudian, 1949); and Xin mingci xuexi cidian(Dictionary of New Terms) (Shanghai hongwen shuju, 1950). This may indicate that the termzhishifenzi was not widely used by the general population before the 1949 Revolution.Evidence seems to suggest that no hegemonic definition of the term existed before 1949.

2. This reservation dates virtually to the inception of the Chinese Communist Party. In theissues of New Youth (Xin qingnian) published under the Party’s sponsorship, the editor, QuQiubai, and others sharply attacked the “intellectual class.” As they saw it, this groupcontained the cultural elite and politically all sorts of people from fascists and nationalists tosocial democrats and anarchists. Eddy U, “The Chinese Communist representation of theknowledge stratum in Xin qingnian 1923–24,” unpublished manuscript, 1995. The mostsuccinct and famous Communist aspersion against intellectuals is perhaps Mao Zedong’sstatement in the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art when he stated that workers and peasantswhose hands were soiled and feet covered with cow-dung were cleaner than bourgeois andpetty-bourgeois intellectuals. See Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (Beijing:Foreign Language Press, 1971).

3. See, for example, Merle Goldman, China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China:Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1994), and “Politically-engaged intellectuals in the Deng–Jiang era: a changing relationshipwith the party-state,” The China Quarterly, No 145 (1996), pp. 35–52); Perry Link,“Intellectuals and cultural policy after Mao,” in A. Doak Barnett and Ralph N. Clough (eds.),Modernizing China: Post-Mao Reform and Development (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986),pp. 81–102; Merle Goldman, Timothy Cheek and Carol Lee Hamrin (eds.), China’sIntellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

102 The China Quarterly

boundary between Chinese intellectuals and the Other is presented asself-evident. On the other, the dispositions to work with and to oppose theCommunist regime are specifically associated with Chinese intellectuals.Like the “moralist” and “realist” traditions in the study of Westernintellectuals, the approach disguises the power dimensions involved indefining the constitution, functions or responsibilities of intellectuals.4

Focusing upon the early 1950s registration of unemployed intellectu-als, this article describes the critical moment in which the Communists’sectarian definition of zhishifenzi became the nation-wide definition. Atone level, state promotion and outreach during the registration broughtthe Communist definition of intellectuals (roughly defined as those whohad at least finished junior high school during this period) deep into urbanareas and pushed other definitions into unofficial status. At another level,despite transgressions, the registration, which involved official endorse-ment or rejection of individual applications, virtually inscribed a socialboundary between intellectuals and non-intellectuals.

Equally important, this article shows that from the beginning thetension between the state and intellectuals went beyond the elite level.Connected as it was to job opportunities, the registration encouragedpeople whom local Communists regarded as politically dubious or profes-sionally unprepared to sign up, sometimes even by fraudulent means. Asthe state lacked the capacity to scrutinize registrants or weed out unac-ceptable ones, local Communists became wary and frequently refused tohire unemployed intellectuals in spite of state instructions to do so. Putanother way, neither the Confucian tradition of intellectual dissent nor theradical legacy of the May Fourth movement sufficiently explains the

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University Press, 1987); Michel Bonnin and Yves Chevrier, “Social dynamics of intellectualautonomy during the post-Mao era,” The China Quarterly, No. 127 (1991), pp. 569–593; andStephen K. Ma, “A dangerous game: Deng and the intellectuals,” The Journal ofContemporary China, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1993), pp. 53–68.

4. Beginning with Emile Zola and currently best exemplified by Edward Said, the“moralist” tradition of studying intellectuals emphasizes their responsibility “to speak thetruth to power.” In contrast, the “realist” tradition defines the intellectual category based onits relation to or location within the political economy. The most common “realist” definitionscame from Antonio Gramsci and Seymour Martin Lipset. The former saw intellectuals aspeople who live on their cultural capital in contradistinction to moneyed capital or manuallabour. The latter defined intellectuals as “all those who create, distribute, and apply culture.”See Jerry Karabel, “Toward a theory of intellectuals and politics,” Theory and Society, No.25 (1996), pp. 205–233; Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited byQuintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1973), pp. 5–23;Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (New York:Pantheon Books, 1994); and Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases ofPolitics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), p. 333. Zygmunt Baumanprovides a theoretical alternative by stressing self-representations of intellectuals or how theyconstitute their own identities. This framework, which Tani Barlow used in her study ofChinese intellectuals, has two shortcomings: it focuses upon elite philosophers, writers andscholars, and it assumes that these people’s actions are most important in constitutingintellectuals’ identities. See Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters (New York:Polity Press, 1987) and Tani Barlow, “Zhishifenzi [Chinese intellectuals] and power,”Dialectical Anthropology, No. 16 (1991), pp. 209–232. Also, Rudolph Wagner, “The Chinesewriter in his own mirror: writers, state, and society – the literary evidence,” in Goldman etal., China’s Intellectuals and the State.


tension between Communist officials and intellectuals at the local level,which was critically shaped by the registration of unemployed intellectu-als.

The article focuses upon the registration of unemployed intellectuals inShanghai. In the early 1950s the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)estimated that its East China administrative region, in which Shanghaiwas the largest city, had 180,000 unemployed intellectuals, almost halfthe nation-wide total. In contrast, the North China administrative region,which included both Beijing and Tianjin, had merely 40,000 unemployedintellectuals.5 A financial, industrial, political and cultural centre beforethe socialist revolution, Shanghai had a highly educated workforce whencompared to other cities.6 Although the people who registered as unem-ployed intellectuals here may not be representative, what transpiredduring the registration is instructive, especially with regard to the meansthe state used to penetrate urban areas, grassroots responses to calls forregistration, and reactions of local officials to the registrants.

Besides having the best-educated population, Shanghai had two otherfeatures that should be underlined for their impact upon the registration.First, a metropolis with an unparalleled presence of foreign, state anddomestic capital before the revolution, Shanghai had sheltered the largestnumbers of trading firms, factories, banks and other economic establish-ments as well as the largest group of schools, publishers and culturalorganizations. Many of these establishments had had foreign sponsors orinfluence. The city had also furnished its population with a brand ofWestern-inspired consumerism, including cafes, department stores, cine-mas and dance halls, not readily available elsewhere.7 Because of thesedevelopments, the people who registered as unemployed intellectuals inShanghai may be expected to be more cosmopolitan and conversant withWestern ideas than those elsewhere.

Secondly, as a key base for political regimes before the revolution,Shanghai had been home to many governments and political organiza-tions, including the municipal Kuomintang (KMT) government, ShanghaiKuomintang Party, and various governing bodies set up or sponsored byforeign nationals. Taken together, these governments and political organi-zations had been a major employer. Even without the dismissals frominside the government that the Communists made when they seized

5. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jingji dang’an ziliao xuanbian: laodong gongzi hezhigong fuli juan 1949–1952 (Selections of Economic Archival Documents of the People’sRepublic of China: Volume on Workforce Salaries and Welfare) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan chubanshe, 1994), p. 193.

6. See Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China,1919–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Christian Henriot, Shanghai1927–1937: Municipal Power, Locality and Modernization (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993); and Leo Ou-fan Lee, “The cultural construction of modernity in urbanShanghai: some preliminary explorations,” in Wen-hsin Yeh (ed.), Becoming Chinese:Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

7. See Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy, p. 56; and Zhongguo zibenzhuyigongshangye de shehuizhuyi gaizao (The Socialist Transformation of China’s CapitalistIndustries and Commerce), first volume on Shanghai (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshichubanshe, 1993).


power, post-revolutionary Shanghai would still have contained a largenumber of people who had worked for previous governments or politicalorganizations but had lost their appointments as a result of regimechanges or other reasons. That is, Shanghai’s unemployed populationcontained a relatively large group of former officials and political partyfunctionaries. In sum, because of Shanghai’s position in the pre-revol-utionary political economy, the CCP was destined to encounter during theregistration of unemployed intellectuals a group of people more bour-geois, Western-oriented and politically complex than anywhere else.

The rest of the article first discusses the early 1950s patterns ofdisplacement in and near Shanghai that pre-selected the pool of applicantsfor the registration of unemployed intellectuals. It then describes theregistration process at the neighbourhood level, highlighting the involve-ment of the urban population and organizational problems that localauthorities encountered. This is followed by a description of the socialbackgrounds of the registrants and the distrust they induced in Commu-nist officials. The conclusion outlines the theoretical implications of thestudy and expands my theoretical critique of existing research on Chineseintellectuals.

Patterns of Job Displacement in Shanghai

Beset by civil war, urban China saw high unemployment in the late1940s.8 The Communists’ subsequent reconstruction of the state andsociety exacerbated the problem. In Shanghai, where foreign embargoes,military battles and capital flight converged in 1950, the municipal labourbureau registered altogether 115,000 unemployed persons. The figureballooned to 414,000 in 1952 and, despite improvement thereafter,266,000 people remained on the unemployment register at the end of1955.9 Thus, Shanghai’s official unemployment rate hovered above 10per cent, and sometimes reached 20 per cent, during the first years afterthe revolution.10 More important for the purpose of this article is under-standing the patterns of lay-offs and displacement, especially among the

8. See Lloyd E. Eastman, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution,1937–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).

9. This paper uses archival documents available at the Shanghai Municipal Archives(SMA). An example of a reference would be B1-1-1121. The first section stands for theagency: B1 (Shanghai Municipal Government); B105 (Shanghai Education Bureau); B127(Shanghai Labour Bureau); B130 (Shanghai Committee for Handling UnemployedIntellectuals); and B131 (Shanghai Labour and Employment Committee). The rest of thenumbers identifies the set of documents in which the specific information can be found. Thefirst time I refer to a set of documents, I include its compilation date and an abridged title.For example, the above figures come from SMA B127-1-78 (statistics on unemployment,1956). The figures, however, understated Shanghai’s unemployment. First, they did notinclude people who had some but inadequate work. Secondly, they did not account forhousewives and sojourners who sought work. Thirdly, popular fear of registration of any kindkept qualified people away from unemployment registration. See Christopher Howe,Employment and Economic Growth in Urban China 1949–1957 (London: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1971), pp. 97–99.

10. These figures are based on a workforce of 1.76 to 1.85 million people in urban Shanghaibetween 1952 and 1955. See Xin Zhongguo wushi nian tongji ziliao huibian (Comprehensive


educated. These patterns critically affected the social composition of thepeople who would later register as unemployed intellectuals. Threepost-revolutionary developments – the reorganization of state-run estab-lishments, contraction of urban business and land reform in the country-side – are particularly important to the analysis.

A revolutionary regime, the CCP began to reorganize state-run estab-lishments as soon as it seized them from the Nationalist government.Beginning in north-eastern China in 1948, such reorganization took placewithin the state bureaucracy and in public institutions such as schools,hospitals and factories. Inside the state bureaucracy, except for depart-ments managing public utilities, the CCP leadership sought to “upset”(daluan) the original organization to facilitate Communist control. Itinstructed the local authorities to lay off “reactionary elements, notori-ously objectionable people, and unusable incompetents,” put the rest ofthe staff to collective training (jixun), and rehire only those who wereindispensable to their departments.11 For those who were dismissed, theleadership wanted them to be reassigned to other positions, put injob-training classes, or sent home with a livelihood allowance. Withinpublic institutions, the leadership wanted the local authorities to keep theentire staff except the most notorious, reactionary and incompetentpeople.12

The Communists’ reorganization of the state bureaucracy and publicinstitutions led to massive lay-offs in Shanghai and other cities in thespring and summer of 1949. In a move unexpected by the centralleadership in Beijing, local Communists exploited the reorganization topurge former officials, inferior employees and redundant staff from theestablishments that they seized. In addition to coerced departures, somepeople resigned upon the changeover. Within a few months, almost27,000 people were cut from the governments and public institutions inShanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.13 Within the Shanghai municipalgovernment alone, the new authorities laid off more than 6,000 peopleand expelled almost 800.14 Within Shanghai’s relatively small publicsecondary school system, they dismissed 276 people or 20 per cent of thefaculty and staff. In this case, and probably in other public institutions,those who were let go had reportedly been involved in the KMT regime,received their posts through ties with KMT officials, or committedwrongdoing such as serious embezzlement, gambling or womanizing.15

The massive lay-offs inside state-run establishments forced a large

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Statistical Data and Materials on 50 Years of New China) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongjichubanshe, 1999), p. 340.

11. Wu Li, “Jianguo chuqi dang guanyu jiuye wenti de zhengce” (“The CCP’s employmentpolicies in the early 1950s”), in Zhonggong dangshi ziliao (Collections of CCP History)(Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1994), pp. 67–68.

12. Ibid.13. Ibid.14. Zhongguo gongchandang zai Shanghai 1921–1991 (The Chinese Communist Party in

Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1991), p. 369.15. SMA B105–1–331 (work reports, 1951).


group of disgraced officials, military officers and state employees on tothe labour market. This achieved one Party objective but engendered“tremendous social unrest” (da bodong) among those who lost their jobsand others whose livelihoods were affected.16 The development forcedBeijing to reconsider its takeover strategy. In September 1949 the centralleadership decided to restrict further lay-offs to fend off uprisings againstthe infant regime. It announced that only “the minority of war criminals,special agents and notoriously objectionable elements” should be re-moved from state-run establishments.17 It even instructed the local author-ities to rehire some of the people they had dismissed. The high-levelturnaround curbed politically motivated dismissals at lower levels. How-ever, it guaranteed that one type of person – those who were mostoffensive in the eyes of the local authorities – would henceforth beover-represented among staff members cut from state-run establishments.Some of these expellees would be arrested during the 1951 CampaignAgainst Counter-revolutionaries and permanently or temporarily exiledfrom the urban area.18 Others would find a new livelihood on their own.But the rest would remain unemployed and see an opportunity to returnto work when the CCP unfurled the registration of unemployed intellec-tuals.

In the early 1950s urban China also saw a severe contraction ofindustries and other economic enterprises because of foreign trade embar-goes and state-led economic changes. Like the CCP takeover of state-runestablishments, this development created massive unemployment amongthe educated population. In Shanghai 1,400 or more than 10 per cent offactories and 6,000 or 6 per cent of shops (shangdian) were closed duringthe first five months of 1950.19 Although many of these establishmentsreopened later due to surging demands created by the Korean War andstate intervention, a total of 1,800 factories and 7,800 shops officiallyapplied for closure that year.20 In the financial sector, the CCP severelyrestricted the activities of private banks and traditional money houses,causing these establishments to go out of business in droves. BetweenFebruary and June 1950, 92 banks and money houses, almost 60 per centof these types of establishments, were closed.21 Other commercial estab-lishments like hotels, jewellery stores, dance halls and newspapers alsosaw rapid declines. Even schools were not immune. Under economic orstate pressure, 36 private schools were closed within the first year after

16. Wu Li, “The CCP’s employment policies,” p. 68; Douzheng (Struggle), 30 September1949 (Zhongguo zhongyang huadongju), p. 1.

17. Wu Li, “The CCP’s employment policies,” p. 69.18. See The CCP in Shanghai, pp. 403–406 for a brief discussion of the campaign in

Shanghai.19. Lynn White III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China’s

Cultural Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 55.20. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu gongshangju 1950 nian gongzuo zongjie” (“The 1950

final report of the Shanghai Municipal Industrial and Commerce Bureau”), in The SocialistTransformation, first volume on Shanghai, p. 95.

21. “Shanghai siying jinrongye de shehuizhuyi gaizao” (“The socialist transformation ofShanghai’s financial sector”), in ibid., second volume on Shanghai, pp. 1092–1100.


the revolution.22 The terminated establishments were mostly small enter-prises involved in handicrafts, trading or services. This means that thepeople they displaced were mainly from the traditional sector of theeconomy. Within the more tenacious modern sector, financial and culturalestablishments experienced more difficulties than industrial enterprises,which meant that a substantial number of people were displaced frombanks, publishing houses and schools.23

Thanks to state interventions, Shanghai’s industry and commercerecovered well in 1951. But the improvements in the urban economywere totally wiped out by the 1952 Five Anti campaign. Organized by thestate, this nation-wide mass movement attacked economic malfeasancesuch as tax evasion and bribery in the manufacturing and businesssectors. Although the CCP forbade firms to go out of business or lay offemployees during the campaign, it could not stop such activities. Manyfirms ceased operations to evade intrusive investigations dictated fromabove. Others suspended or curtailed business to comply with campaignrequirements or cope with reduced market demand. These measurescreated “a wave of sackings,” forcing the state to halt the campaignearlier than planned to stem the rise of social dissatisfaction. However,“urban unemployment was again high and confidence in the prospects forurban employment growth again shattered.”24 Preliminary evidence indi-cates that most lay-offs during the campaign came from small andmedium firms. In fact, the state, already a main user of industrialproducts, helped large factories to survive by giving them additionalorders.25 This combination of state and firm behaviours suggests that thepeople who lost their jobs during the campaign, once again, came mostlyfrom the traditional sector of the economy.

The post-revolutionary land reform in the countryside, which destroyedthe landlord class, created another kind of urban unemployment involvingeducated people. In the vicinity of Shanghai, land reform started inmid-1950. As elsewhere, it was relatively peaceful in the beginning butturned repressive once the Korean War broke out.26 Besides publichumiliation, landlords and their kin faced labour reform, incarcerationand summary execution. The intensification of punishments promptedmany landlord families to flee the countryside and travel to Shanghai, ifthey had not already done so. The exodus contained some of the most

22. “Jiefang chuqi Shanghai pujiao xitong de jieguan zhengdun he gaizao” (“The takeover,reorganization and reform of Shanghai’s primary and secondary school system during theearly 1950s”) in Zhonggong Shanghai shi jiaoyu weisheng tiyu xitong dangshi wenji(Collections of Party Historical Materials on Shanghai’s Education, Health and Sports)(Shanghai: Tongji daxue chubanshe 1996), p. 31; and Eddy U, “Professional degeneration andpolitical decay: Shanghai schoolteachers and the socialist state 1949–1968,” Ph.D.dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 58–62.

23. The Socialist Transformation, first volume on Shanghai.24. Christopher Howe, Employment and Economic Growth in Urban China, 1949–1957

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 96.25. “Shanghai ‘wufan’ yundong” (“The Five Anti campaign in Shanghai”), in The Socialist

Transformation, second volume on Shanghai, p. 875.26. Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (New

York: The Free Press, 1986), pp. 107–108; White, Policies of Chaos, pp. 247–48.


educated people in the rural Jiangnan area. Part of the traditional landedgentry, these people had attended traditional tutor schools (sishu) orreceived secondary or even college education in or near Shanghai.27

Many of them, like peasant migrants, sought shelter in Shanghai andfound themselves looking for work in a fast-changing urban economy.

In addition to the above-described developments, two other forms ofdisplacement should be noted for their impact on the registration ofunemployed intellectuals in urban China. First, the large number ofestablishment closures or reduction of operations during the late 1940sand early 1950s put tremendous pressure upon household incomes andprompted a large number of housewives to enter or re-enter the labourmarket. Some of these women had a secondary or post-secondary edu-cation and ended up registering as unemployed intellectuals. Secondly,economic pressure on households also forced college and secondaryschool students to terminate their education and enter the labour market.Some of these people would come forward during the registration ofunemployed intellectuals.28

Before looking at how various groups (former officials and stateemployees, former non-state white-collar workers, former landlords andtheir kin, housewives, and college and secondary school dropouts) faredduring the registration of unemployed intellectuals in Shanghai, a dis-cussion of the implementation of the registration is in order. Likedisplacement patterns, this social process was a key factor affecting whowould officially become unemployed intellectuals.

The Registration of Unemployed Intellectuals

Immediately after seizing power, the CCP actively organized unem-ployment welfare in urban China. As part of its programmes, the party-state offered scattered assistance to college and secondary schoolgraduates as well as dropouts and to unemployed teachers and otherjobless white-collar workers during the following two years. Throughregional governments, local state agencies and state-controlled labourassociations, placement programmes, training courses, temporary workand living subsidies were made available to these people, who wereloosely referred to as unemployed intellectuals by the CCP leadership.29

Then, in early 1951, eager to incorporate knowledge and skills into thestate bureaucracy and public institutions to quicken modernization, Bei-jing instructed local governments to register, recruit and train unem-ployed intellectuals, who were now more concretely defined as jobless

27. An early 1930s survey indicates that almost half of the men in the countryside hadreceived some schooling. Among them, two-thirds had gone to tutor school for an averageof four years. Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth CenturyChina: The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996), p. 77.

28. Political purges during the Three Anti and Five Anti campaigns also contributed tounemployment. The number of people so displaced was relatively small, but they were someof the least politically desirable people on the labour market.

29. Selections of Economic Archival Documents, pp. 188–89.


people who had at least graduated from senior high school, possessed anequivalent education, or had “considerable knowledge and prestige” inthe local community.30 It indicated that these governments should putunemployed intellectuals in “people’s revolutionary universities,” vo-cational training, and positions in education, construction, communicationand so on. To undermine its political enemies, the CCP leadershipdemanded that no former KMT special agents (tewu), local tyrants (eba),or counter-revolutionaries receive help from the party-state even if thesepeople satisfied the academic requirements. These instructions initiated aperiod of state-society mobilization to identify unemployed intellectualsthat culminated in 1952.

In Shanghai the municipal government established a special office, TheShanghai Municipal Office for Handling Unemployed Intellectuals(Shanghai shi chuli shiye zhishifenzi bangongshi) (SOUI), to put out-of-work intellectuals back to productive labour. Through newspapers, pam-phlets, bulletin-board messages, and presentations during mass meetingsand conferences, the SOUI announced in urban areas and rural districtsthat it would begin to register unemployed intellectuals on 1 December1951.31 A major change, however, had occurred in the official definitionof unemployed intellectuals between Beijing’s decision and Shanghai’sannouncement. The term no longer referred to unemployed people whohad at least earned a senior high school diploma or an equivalenteducation. It now included jobless individuals who had completed juniorhigh school or who had two years of such education plus “considerable”supplementary learning or work experience.32 The change basically re-drew the boundary between intellectuals and non-intellectuals and greatlyaugmented the number of people who could register as unemployedintellectuals. The state had also laid down additional rules on the politicalqualifications of the people to whom it would provide assistance. Forexample, as long as they satisfied the education requirements, children ofrural landlords who had not directly engaged in exploitation couldregister. Former taxi dancers who had the education could do so, too. Incontrast, former heads of landlords families, college students who hadrefused official assignments, and post-revolutionary expellees from themilitary, government or public institutions were not eligible.33 To clarifythe criteria for registration, the SOUI prepared a catechism regardingacademic, occupational and political eligibility for its staff.

The SOUI organized ten registration offices, each containing five to tenpeople, in various districts. Except for one or two people who wereregular state officials, the staff in each office were mainly Communistactivists from the state-controlled Women’s Federation or other state-sponsored mass organizations. Some were themselves unemployed before

30. Ibid. p. 190.31. B1-1–1121 (establishing the Committee for Handling Unemployed Intellectuals,

September–December 1951), p. 53.32. “Youguan chuli shiye zhishifenzi de wenti yu jieda” (“Questions and answers

regarding the handling of unemployed intellectuals”), in SMA B1–1–1121, pp. 56–58.33. Ibid.


their appointments to a registration office. The SOUI asked potentialregistrants to bring their academic, professional and residence papers aswell as a photo, personal seal and autobiography (zizhuan) to a nearbyregistration office. It also required them to fill out an application andprovide information regarding their family origin, former occupations,professional expertise and political affiliations.34 Because of the highunemployment, the SOUI received a very enthusiastic response. Withinthe first month, it signed up almost 9,000 people.35 It also encounterednumerous applicants who could not produce academic certificates or oldletters of appointment. To address the problem, the municipal govern-ment quickly summoned the assistance of 300 professional, trade andsocial associations throughout the city. These included the Shanghaibranches of the National Natural Scientist Association, News WorkerAssociation and Peasant Association as well as all district branches of theSino-Soviet Friendship Association and Housewife Association. TheSOUI asked the applicants who lacked legitimate papers to approachthese organizations, whose staff would then use their professional knowl-edge or familiarity with the applicants to evaluate and, when appropriate,certify the latter’s academic achievements or work experience.36 Theservices that these associations proffered amplified the scope of socialparticipation in the registration beyond the state and the applicants toinclude virtually every occupational group, and even non-occupationalgroups, in Shanghai.

The onset of the Three Anti and Five Anti Campaigns in Shanghai inearly 1952 severely impaired the registration of unemployed intellectuals.Sensing political uncertainties, potential applicants were reluctant to signup for state assistance.37 More importantly, in assembling manpower forthe investigative and punitive campaigns, the government withdrewregular state officials and supervision from the registration offices. As aresult, even though more than 10,000 people signed up as unemployedintellectuals in the first quarter of 1952, the registration was tainted byirresponsible, unethical and even illegal behaviour in the offices.38 In anApril report, the SOUI observed that its district offices had slipped intoutter disorder (fangren-ziliu) since the departure of many of the regularstate officials. Lacking direction, the staff became negligent, listless,disgruntled and divided. Their mental condition had “completely sunkeninto an excessively chaotic state.”39 In Zhabei district, the governmentcited, the staff generally came late and left early. They played chess andwent to cinemas or billiard halls during office hours. In other districts, noone even re-hung the office placard after it fell down.40

34. Ibid. pp. 53–5435. Ibid.36. SMA B130–1–3 (unemployed intellectuals without appropriate documentation,

December 1952).37. Ibid.38. SMA B1–1–1121.39. SMA B130–2–3 (work summaries and survey reports, April 1952), p. 1.40. Ibid. p. 2.


The registration staff, the report continued, provided “crude and care-less” reports on the registrants.41 Ideally, they should go to the neighbour-hoods, workplaces and associations recounted by the registrants to lookinto their professional, political and social lives to make sure they hadtold the truth on their applications. Insufficiently trained or instructed, thestaff asked prosaic questions. Some of them exploited field assignmentsto go elsewhere or return home. In Yimiao district, the SOUI noted, thestaff failed to catch a registrant lying about a friendship with a Commu-nist and another one covering up his involvement in a KMT specialservice agency. In other cases, the relatives of convicted counter-revolu-tionaries were taken as “housewives’ representatives.” The SOUI re-ported that such shoddy investigative work led to the sending ofunacceptable people to state-funded job-training classes.42

Furthermore, the SOUI observed, some staff members had illicitlyplaced their relatives and friends into job-training programmes or takenmoney from registrants. In Laozha district, the report stated, an officialhelped his friends to sign up as unemployed intellectuals and took moneyfrom some of them.43 In Xincheng district, a staff member insisted onrecommending a colleague’s sister-in-law for a teacher-training classeven though she was not qualified academically. Another staff member inthis office reportedly fell in love with a registrant and tried to help her getinto a job-training programme. In sum, the temporary suspension of statecontrol over the registration of unemployed intellectuals during the ThreeAnti and Five Anti Campaigns severely compromised how the stateidentified, investigated and approved the candidates for registration.

After a late spring rebound as a result of renewed state intervention, theregistration of unemployed intellectuals petered out from lack of appli-cants. The municipal government officially terminated the registration inthe autumn of 1952.44 At the same time, it started what Beijing called“unified unemployment registration.” A nation-wide project, the newregistration was designed to be a comprehensive assessment of urbanunemployment and a survey of neighbourhood characteristics.45 InShanghai, a multitude of neighbourhood unemployment registration com-mittees were formed to sign up former officials, state employees, soldiers,white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, labourers, students,housewives and other individuals looking for work. For example, inYulin district, where the population was 230,000, over 1,800 peoplejoined such committees.46 Each committee normally contained seven to13 people drawn from the neighbourhood it served, most of themunemployed workers, youths or housewives whom the government

41. Ibid. p. 18.42. Ibid. pp. 17–18.43. Ibid. p. 4.44. SMA B130–1–7 (closing registration offices, May 1953–March 1954).45. Selections of Economic Archival Documents, p. 180. Also, “Gongzuo renyuan shouce”

(“Handbook for staff members”) published by the Publicity and Mobilization Division of theShanghai Municipal Labour and Employment Committee, p. 2 in SMA B131–1–7 (rules andregulations on unified unemployment registration, September 1952–April 1954).

46. “Handbook for staff members,” p. 14.


recognized as Communist activists. Under official direction, these localcommittees used word of mouth, oral presentations, symposia, bulletinboards and big-character posters to announce the new unemploymentregistration and its regulations. They set up neighbourhood stations toreceive applicants and even located and visited potential applicants tourge them to register.47

Following Beijing’s instruction, the Shanghai government had, onceagain, relaxed and elaborated the criteria for registering people as unem-ployed intellectuals. As long as they had the required education, post-rev-olutionary expellees from the military, government or public institutionswere no longer banned. In the same vein, the government permitted stateemployees who had been fired for wrongdoing during the recent ThreeAnti and Five Anti Campaigns to sign up as unemployed intellectuals.Two other groups of people also benefited from rule changes or elabor-ation. If they could demonstrate sufficient education, former clergymen,Daoist practitioners and fortune-tellers were now eligible.48 Similarly,white-collar workers who had had brief stints in the educational, scientificor other professional fields before enduring long periods of unemploy-ment could register. In contrast, even if they met the education require-ments, housewives who asked for placement assistance and secondaryschool graduates who had never held stable employment could only havetheir applications “put on record.”49 This meant that unless their familieswere in dire poverty, these housewives and graduates would receive stateassistance only after the rest of the unemployed intellectuals had beenhelped. As before, the government handed out catechisms to the regis-tration staff to help them handle common and specific problems thatoccurred during the registration.

To curb registration abuse, the municipal government introduced aprocess of collective appraisal (pingyi) to determine the unemploymentstatus of every applicant. Under each neighbourhood registration com-mittee, small groups containing registration officials, staff members andapplicants were formed to discuss the education, work experience, causeof unemployment and other matters related to the applicants. Frequently,the latter were invited to the discussion to provide information on theirown applications. The small group then decided to accept, reject or put onrecord each application they received. This process of evaluation andcategorization, the government suggested, should “bring together theleaders’ intent and the masses’ wish.”50 For example, in Shencheng Lane,a middle-class area in Changshu district, the government reported that itregistered 40 unemployed intellectuals and put 72 housewives on therecord.51 In Baxian Lane, Songshan district, which the government cited

47. Ibid. p. 4.48. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu laodong jiuye weiyuanhui guanyu shiye renyuan tongyi

dengji banfa shixing xize” (“Bylaws on the unified unemployment registration, Labour andEmployment Committee, Shanghai Municipal Government”), 22 December 1952 in SMAB131-1-7.

49. Ibid.50. “Handbook for staff members,” p. 4.51. SMA B131-2-2 (work reports, September–December 1952), pp. 23–24.


as an exemplar, the registration committee had double-checked theappraisals, corrected misjudgements and briefed unsuccessful applicantsbefore concluding its work.52 Altogether the Shanghai government regis-tered 6,000 more unemployed intellectuals during the “unified unemploy-ment registration.”53

Although it lasted a mere few months, the “unified registration” notonly maintained the state-society mobilization to identify unemployedintellectuals but expanded both the state’s and society’s involvement. Onone side, the state reached into urban areas to register unemployedintellectuals as it sought to ascertain the extent of urban unemploymentand demographic characteristics. On the other side, no longer was theparticipation of society limited to potential applicants, urban associationsand a small group of Communist activists. Every urban neighbourhoodwas actively involved in the search for unemployed intellectuals. Suchdevelopments had a profound impact upon urban China: they brought tolife the Communist category of zhishifenzi. From then on, not only waszhishifenzi an official category widely recognized within the state andsociety, it was also a social group whose members could be found invirtually every urban area. As a definition and a social group, zhishifenziacquired an unprecedented clarity.

The Social Composition of Unemployed Intellectuals and GovernmentReactions

The discussion so far has been of post-revolutionary unemployment inShanghai, the CCP’s definition and redefinition of unemployed intellectu-als, and the implementation of two registration campaigns. This sectionexamines how these circumstances shaped the social composition of thegroup and how Communist officials reacted to it. What began partly as atop-down search for expertise to build socialism ended virtually as anofficial denouncement of unemployed intellectuals. Not only did Commu-nist officials at various levels find the political outlooks of unemployedintellectuals disagreeable, they deplored their lack of professional skills.As the registration proceeded, it became clear to the Communist author-ities that the group would be as much a liability as an asset to the state.

From the start of the registration of unemployed intellectuals to the endof the “unified registration,” the SOUI registered 40,000 people asunemployed intellectuals.54 Among this number, four groups of peoplepredominated: former state employees and schoolteachers, former indus-trial and commercial personnel, housewives, and college and secondaryschool dropouts.55 The inclusion of housewives in the registration gave

52. “Handbook for staff members,” p. 9.53. SMA B127-1-78. p. 13.54. Ibid. p. 2 and SMA B1-1-1121, p. 103.55. According to self-reports of 8,000 registrants from five districts, former government

employees and teachers, former industrial and commercial personnel, housewives, andcollege and school dropouts accounted for 30, 21, 28, and 12% of the registrants respectively.Former KMT military and judicial officers (1%), children of rural landlords (2%) and othersmade up the remainder. These statistics, the government stated, were “not totally reliable.”


Table 1: Educational Attainments of Unemployed Intellectuals by Age(with percentage)

18–25 26–35 36–45 46–60 Above 60 Total

Junior high 8,008 6,398 2,129 637 32 17,204(62.5) (45.3) (41.0) (35.2) (18.2) (50.4)

Senior high 4,235 5,823 2,096 588 51 12,793(33.1) (41.2) (40.3) (32.5) (29.0) (37.5)

College 568 1,898 953 536 65 4,020(4.4) (13.4) (18.3) (29.6) (36.9) (11.8)

Others 3 16 20 50 28 117(0.0) (0.1) (0.4) (2.7) (15.9) (0.3)

Total 12,814 14,135 5,198 1,811 176 34,134(100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0)

Notes:The figures are based on self-reports of 34,000 people who signed up as unemployed

intellectuals before November 1952. “College” refers to two years of post-secondaryvocational training as well as regular college or post-baccalaureate training. “Others” refersto the possession of professional expertise or recognized knowledge and local reputation butnot formal academic credentials.Source:

SMA B1-1-1121, p. 206.

women a moderate majority (57 per cent), while the inclusion of juniorhigh graduates made the college-educated a small minority (12 per cent).More importantly, half of the registrants barely met the academicqualifications for registration, and the older the registrants, the moreeducated they tended to be (see Table 1). No doubt war and disorderdisrupted young adults’ education shortly before and after the revolution.But this is not the reason why the youngest group of unemployedintellectuals was least educated. On the heels of the revolution, the CCPactively recruited young adults, especially those with college or highschool education, to work for the state. In major urban areas, it promotedan array of cadre-training courses that would prepare these people forgovernment posts. It also recruited young men and women into thePeople’s Liberation Army to become political instructors, propagandaofficers and military journalists.56 These kinds of recruitment guidedmany well-educated young adults who would have been unemployed ina post-war economy into the officialdom or military.

footnote continued

Some registrants concealed their connections to the KMT party-state, bourgeoisie or landlordclass; expellees from work organizations lied about their dismissals; and the disorganizationof the registration encouraged technically or politically unqualified people to illicitly sign upfor assistance. SMA B1-1-1121, p. 103.

56. Immediately after the Shanghai takeover, the CCP placed advertisements in majornewspapers to attract young adults to work for the state. Among others, the recruiting agenciesincluded the Northeastern Regional Government, New China News Agency, and variouspolitical, cultural, and field divisions of the PLA. See August to December 1949 issues ofJiefang ribao (Liberation Daily) and Ezra Vogel, Canton Under Communism: Programs andPolitics in a Provincial Capital 1949–1968 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1969), pp. 55–60.


According to SOUI surveys, 23 per cent of the registrants had workedin the financial or economic sector, including banking, accounting, statis-tics and international trade; 19 per cent had been schoolteachers or hadworked in education, arts, sports or the mass media; and 7 per cent hadhad jobs in industry, construction, medicine, transportation, communi-cation or agriculture. The last group included doctors, nurses, pharma-cists, veterinarians, factory supervisors, engineers and technicians.Another 7 per cent reported clerical experience such as typing, short-handand secretarial work. But the largest group, 35 per cent, reported nospecial skill or omitted their expertise.57 This group contained a largenumber of housewives as well as college and secondary school dropouts.

Among those who reported skills, the SOUI noted that few were bonafide professional experts with “real knowledge and ability.”58 The greaterpart of the registrants from the field of finance and economics, forinstance, had no more than one year of supplementary education (buxi) inaccounting or bookkeeping. As for the doctors, the SOUI complained,they were mostly traditional herbalists (rather than Western-style physi-cians) “who could not be used without retraining.”59 As shown above, thepost-war economic decline forced many small and medium establish-ments within the traditional economy to close. Small wonder that fewunemployed intellectuals were highly skilled. Expecting to get manyknowledgeable and skilful people, SOUI officials were understandablydisappointed. They complained that the majority of unemployed intellec-tuals would not be occupationally effective without further study ortraining, for these people had been chronically unemployed, had no workexperience or had no specialized knowledge. In short, the SOUI stated,these were “ordinary personnel.”60

More disturbing to the Shanghai authorities, however, were the politi-cal backgrounds or orientations of the unemployed intellectuals. TheSOUI indicated that the group contained “many sons and youngerbrothers of landlords and rich peasants, reactionary [Nationalist] Partyand [Nationalist Youth] Corps elements, former judicial personnel, stateemployees, public school teachers, military officers, etc. and their familymembers.”61 These people, it remarked, had poor political consciousness.They lacked the “serve-the-people perspective” and harboured verystrong hedonist (xiangle) thoughts.62 The SOUI did not draw such conclu-sions from the applications it took from unemployed intellectuals, forsuch documents contained fabrications and cover-ups. Neither did it reachthem through its own investigations, for it lacked the manpower orcompetence to scrutinize the registrants. The political analysis coalescedwhen the SOUI assigned unemployed intellectuals to job openings ortraining programmes available at other party-state agencies. Protective of

57. SMA B130-1-6 (work summaries, November 1951–November 1952), p. 5.58. Ibid. p. 6.59. Ibid. pp. 5–6.60. Ibid. p. 6.61. SMA B1-1-1121, p. 105.62. Ibid. p. 103 and SMA B130-1-6, p. 7.


their own organizations, these agencies usually conducted their owninvestigations of the newcomers or applicants. If they were locatedoutside Shanghai, they normally demanded clarifications of the candi-dates’ backgrounds from the SOUI or other Shanghai agencies. Thesepost-registration investigations, which involved an array of party-stateagencies, critically shaped how the Shanghai authorities looked at unem-ployed intellectuals politically.

For instance, the Shanghai Education Bureau, one of the agenciestapping into the pool of unemployed intellectuals, enrolled 3,000 peoplein a teacher-training programme in mid-1952. After putting everyonethrough a confession (tanbai), it made an alarming report on the class’spolitical composition. The bureau found 600 people who had worked forthe KMT party-state or who were former members of the KMT party oryouth corps. Among these people, 49 had held leadership positions in theparty or youth corps; 48 had worked for one or more KMT intelligenceor para-intelligence units, and 38 had occupied high-ranking positions inthe KMT government. The last group included a former KMT vice-min-ister and a former chief of the Shanghai Education Bureau.63 Moreover,the bureau discovered some former landlords, drug traffickers, convictsand expelled state employees in the group. It concluded that the politicalbackgrounds of these unemployed intellectuals were “very compli-cated.”64

Since this type of information was mostly based on confessions, whoseaccuracy was questionable, and since the Shanghai government had noway of rapidly and precisely identifying every former KMT agent,wrongdoer or politically undesirable person among the ranks of unem-ployed intellectuals, their assignment to job openings in the expandingstate sector created tremendous trepidation among Communist officials.As the post-revolutionary lay-offs involving state-run establishmentsindicated, these officials had sought to strengthen their organizationspolitically by expelling former KMT agents and inferior employees. Littlesurprise that as the SOUI tried to place unemployed intellectuals intovarious party-state agencies, it discovered that too many of them imposed“undue [political] requirements” on the job candidates. Their policy, asSOUI officials put it, was “rather be short than careless [in recruitment]”(ningque-wulan).65

What happened to Yu Jielin, which the SOUI cited as very common,is instructive.66 A 36-year-old man with two years of senior high edu-cation, Yu had received two months of training from the People’sInsurance Company before the registration of unemployed intellectualsbegan. But the company did not hire him because he was a former villagehead who had taken classes from the KMT party and youth corps. Yulater registered as an unemployed intellectual. The SOUI recommended

63. SMA B105-1-614 (reports on New Education College, January 1952–January 1953).Also, Eddy U, “Professional degeneration and political decay,” pp. 71–75.

64. Ibid.65. SMA B130-1-6, p. 11.66. Ibid. pp. 12–13.


him to the Shanghai Medical Equipment Manufacturing Company, and hepassed its written and physical exams. But he also failed to get a jobthere. Upon investigation, the SOUI discovered that the company feltYu’s background was too “complicated” and had therefore rejected him.67

In the same vein, party-state agencies outside Shanghai exhibitedextreme caution when they tapped into the city’s pool of unemployedintellectuals. There were two reasons why such agencies were involved inhiring these people. First, Shanghai did not have enough jobs for its ownunemployed intellectuals. Secondly, the agencies outside Shanghaineeded people with knowledge and skills. Ranging from central-level toprovincial-level establishments, these agencies wanted professionals suchas engineers and college teachers as well as people who could read, writeand do clerical work. Most of all, however, they wanted people who hadno affiliation with the KMT. For instance, the SOUI recorded that theEast China Bureau of Mining Industry had considered a well-educatedZhao Dequan. But it did not hire him because his neighbourhood residentcommittee stated that he had participated in the Nationalist Youth Corps,a charge that Zhao firmly denied and the neighbourhood police had yet toexamine. After being rejected, Zhao complained to the bureau’s represen-tative, who then asked the police to certify that Zhao had never been aNationalist Youth Corps member. Since they had not done the investiga-tion, the police refused the request. But the representative pressured thepolice to take a different, more difficult, stance: “If we hire Zhao, will thepolice take full responsibility [for his actions]?”68 This was not a rareoccurrence. The SOUI reported that other agencies often rejected jobapplicants because the police had not investigated their backgrounds.Even when the police had done so, a qualified conclusion, such as “up tonow, no political problem has been found with this candidate,” did notsatisfy some agencies that wanted a categorical affirmation that thecandidates were “politically reliable” or had a “clean history.”69

The extreme care that party-state agencies inside and outside Shanghaiexhibited in the hiring of unemployed intellectuals, ironically, reinforcedthe latter’s tendency to lie about or conceal their backgrounds. For theweaker one’s connection to the KMT or the landlord class, and the fewermistakes or wrongdoing one had committed in the workplace, the betterchance one had of getting a job in a tight economy. Inverting a well-known Communist slogan at the time, some unemployed intellectualsremarked that the government’s placement policy was “leniency for thosewho concealed [their backgrounds]; harshness for those who con-fessed.”70 The policy benefited the dishonest and penalized the truthful.From another perspective, the extreme caution that party-state agenciesundertook when hiring unemployed intellectuals exacerbated the percep-tions, both inside and outside the party-state, that these people formed a

67. Ibid.68. SMA B130-2-6 (opinions on hiring, February–June 1953).69. SMA B130-1-6, p. 11.70. The original slogan was “leniency for those who confess; harshness for those who

resist” (tanbai congkuan, kangju congyan). SMA B130-1-6, p. 14.


pariah group or, at the very least, many of them were unworthy of stateemployment. This development undoubtedly compromised, though it didnot defeat, an official objective of the registration of unemployed intellec-tuals, which was the alleviation of urban unemployment.

By May 1953 the SOUI reported that only 12,300 or roughly one-thirdof the unemployed intellectuals had found jobs. Among them, 10,500 gottheir appointments through state assistance. This group was somewhatyounger than the general population of unemployed intellectuals. Thosebetween the ages of 18 and 25 comprised 38 per cent of that populationbut 43 per cent of those hired, although they were considerably lesseducated than their elders as a group.71 The success of young unemployedintellectuals in this regard was probably the result of one or more of thefollowing reasons. First, many of them were single or childless and thusmore open to relocation, even beyond Shanghai. Secondly, party-stateagencies favoured young unemployed intellectuals because of their shortwork histories, which could be clarified with relative ease when com-pared to some long lists of appointments presented by older applicants. Inother words, when they hired young unemployed intellectuals, theseagencies recognized that they were less likely to get former KMT agents,landlords or other kinds of people they did not want. Thirdly, influencedby the central leadership’s preference to train and hire young adults, theShanghai authorities offered young unemployed intellectuals more train-ing and placement opportunities.

In sum, with the social, political and economic processes surroundingthe registration of unemployed intellectuals, its outcome was not asdesirable as the Shanghai or higher authorities had expected. Based uponthe composition of the group or, more appropriately, the lingeringuncertainty surrounding its composition, Communist officials found manyunemployed intellectuals unusable or did not want to risk using them. Inthe end, the registration created difficulties for both the state and theintellectuals. The state had difficulty finding work for the bulk ofunemployed intellectuals, and the latter virtually became political sus-pects within the emerging socialist order.

It is true that the rest of the unemployed population also containedpeople whom the Communist authorities found undesirable, such asformer workers with gangster affiliations and former KMT soldiers. Butsince the CCP leadership did not need the rest of the unemployedpopulation as much as unemployed intellectuals to build the party-statebureaucracy and public institutions, lower levels of government did notworry as much about the politics or skill levels of the former group orconsider its members for professional, administrative or white-collarpositions. Put another way, unemployed intellectuals posed a distinctivethreat to Communist officials who believed that the political organizationof their establishments could be significantly corrupted by the intellectu-als’ appointments. In this respect, the registration of unemployed intellec-

71. SMA B130-1-7.


tuals and their assignments to state-run establishments created a new kindof political tension in the developing socialist state and society.

Theoretical Implications

In an 1980 interview with Le Monde, Michel Foucault stated that hehad never met any intellectuals, but only people who talked about them.He noted that “the intellectual is raw material for a verdict, a sentence, acondemnation, an exclusion …” and wondered what intellectuals wouldsuffer if the words hurled against them become actions. To Foucault, theintellectual was a social construction mistaken as objective reality, aconcoction rather than essence.72 Even though he did not elaborate thehistory of this construction, as he did with human sexuality or madness,we can deduce from his oeuvre that the intellectual is, at any historicalmoment, reproduced by discursive practice (statements, assertions, utter-ances and their internal rules and relations) and nondiscursive practice(power relations, economic and social processes, institutional arrange-ments, and behavioural patterns).73 As these practices change, so do thedefinition, composition, significance, experience and even the existenceof the intellectual. In my opinion, Foucault was mistaken in his one-sidedassessment of the ways in which the intellectual was constructed. Ratherthan being used as the “raw material” for a verdict or an attack, theintellectual has many times become a social privilege, asset or honour.Nevertheless, his observations on the social construction of the intellec-tual should help in consideration of the implications of this article forfuture research.

The early 1950s registration of unemployed intellectuals demonstratesthat the Chinese intellectual or zhishifenzi was, indeed, a social construc-tion. First, involving high-level instructions, regional organizations andlocal mobilizations, the registration brought the Communist definition ofthe social category deep into urban areas and inscribed an officialboundary between intellectuals and non-intellectuals. Even though thisboundary was altered by the state and contested by individual registrantsduring the registration, the process established zhishifenzi as a socialmarker at the state and societal level. Secondly, the conditions underwhich the registration occurred profoundly affected the kinds of peoplecategorized as intellectuals. The combination of business closures, politi-cal purges and registration problems brought a large number of low-skilled clerical workers and housewives as well as former KMT agentsand expelled employees into the social category. Thirdly, official surveys

72. Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, and Culture (NewYork: Routledge, 1990), pp. 324–25. Foucault also proposed the idea of “specificintellectuals,” which challenges neither the “moralist” nor “realist” tradition of studyingintellectuals. See Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings1972–1977, edited by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 126–133.

73. The above view is stated in The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: HarperColophon, 1972). I use it to separate the elements in the constitution of the intellectualcategory. See Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralismand Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 62–63.


of unemployed intellectuals during and after the registration shaped thereactions of Communist officials, who generally regarded these people aspolitically or professionally unreliable and, given the choice, would shyaway from hiring them.

My analysis admittedly covers a very small slice of the constitutionand reconstitution of zhishfenzi in socialist China. It focuses upon thelowest reaches of the category and the effects of a single event. It studiesnondiscursive practice and largely brackets discursive practice such asofficial or unofficial statements on intellectuals. The analysis is a snap-shot of a far-reaching, multi-dimensional, and ongoing sociopoliticalprocess. Following Foucault, a more comprehensive examination of theconstitution of zhishifenzi in socialist China should include, at the veryleast, official and non-official discourses of intellectuals, the work and lifeof writers, teachers and other white-collar workers, and the mental worldsof these people and those who interacted with them. My study suggestsa need for more research on the constitution of zhishifenzi and thepotentially generous pay-offs that can be derived from such research (beit targeted at Republican, Maoist or post-Mao China). For at issue is notonly who belonged to the social category or to what extent, but also howthe intellectuals as a group and as individuals are inserted into thepolitical economy at national, regional and local levels, as well as howthe production and reproduction of the category transformed politics andculture at those levels.74

Given the demographic, organizational and political factors embeddedin the constitution of zhishifenzi, my analysis does suggest that existingresearch on Chinese intellectuals has shortcomings. First, with regard tothe 20th century, such research focuses upon elite writers, scholars andscientists. While it has enhanced our knowledge of Chinese intellectuals,it has also “naturalized” the social category. Its focus on the cultural elite,or intellectuals par excellence within the “moralist” and “realist” tradi-tions in the study of Western intellectuals, masks the fact that thedefinition and composition of zhishifenzi have changed many timesthroughout the century. With respect to the post-1949 period, suchresearch is particularly inadequate, for the bulk of zhishifenzi by officialdefinitions as well as self-definitions were mid- and low-level white-col-lar workers such as journalists, engineers and schoolteachers. In otherwords, existing research not only naturalizes the social category ofChinese intellectuals but misses much of its membership in relation to theCommunist period.

Secondly, existing research on intellectuals under Communist rulefocuses upon their relations to the state, which include their conflicts andco-operation with Communist leaders and officials as well as the evol-ution of official policies and social actions with respect to intellectuals.

74. A very useful study is Rudolph Wagner, Inside a Service Trade: Studies inContemporary Chinese Prose (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, HarvardUniversity, 1992), esp. ch. 4 which deals with official use of cartoons to influence publicopinions, including opinions on intellectuals.


These inquiries too often assume that the intellectuals of the 1950s, 1960sor beyond comprised the same group or same types of people (eventhough they acknowledge that the socialist regime, including its leader-ship composition, has been changing). Merle Goldman, for example,traces the thoughts and behaviours of zhishifenzi to the Confucian andMay-Fourth traditions of intellectual dissent, an argument no doubtconnected to her research on elite scholars.75 In reality, which shouldsurprise no one, the intellectuals of different periods have had drasticallydifferent backgrounds. For instance, the group from the 1950s containeda disproportionate number of former Communist foes and critics becausethe CCP defined many of these people as intellectuals or recruited theminto the ranks. In contrast, the group from the 1980s was considerablyless educated than earlier cohorts because of the damage the educationsystem suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Without taking thetransformations within the intellectual group into consideration, existingresearch on its relations to the state misses a major variable. It hasoverstated the effects of a historical continuity upon such a relation andunderestimated the power of social transformations within socialist Chinaitself.

Thirdly, the emphasis on the relationship between elite intellectualsand the state has itself limited the scope of research. One of the mostinteresting developments in the constitution of zhishifenzi during theCommunist decades is the involvement of local state apparatuses andsociety at large. From the beginning, the CCP has actively sought tosubjugate intellectuals locally by defining and delimiting their compo-sition, authority and privileges. The aim has been to keep intellectualsunder surveillance in the workplace, around the residence and even insidethe family. Since existing research focuses upon elite intellectuals and thestate, it says little about interactions between non-elite intellectuals andlocal state apparatuses or society at large. A host of non-elite politicalactors such as local party-state officials, neighbourhood residents andblue-collar workers has been more or less invisible. We do not know howthese groups of people have assisted or resisted the implementation oftop-down policies with respect to intellectuals. In other words, existingresearch tends to overlook the everyday situation of the bulk of intellec-tuals.

To conclude, future research on Chinese intellectuals in the 20thcentury may break new ground, both theoretically and empirically, if ittreats zhishifenzi as a social construction and examines the discursive andnondiscursive practices that have supported its reproduction. Specifically,we have much to gain in relation to our knowledge about the socialiststate and society if we focus upon non-elite intellectuals.

75. See n. 3.

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