Ideological Remoulding of the Intellectuals

A policy adopted by the Communist Party of China towards the intellectuals before and after the founding of New China, it constitutes the Party's basic policy towards the intellectuals together with the policy of "unity" and "education", towards them.

In December 1939, the Central Committee of the CPC made a decision to recruit a large number of intellectuals, “Decision” emphasized the important role of intellectuals in the revolutionary cause, and pointed out that intellectuals should be "politically educated" and “help them to temper themselves in war and work and to serve the army" thus they will gradually overcome their weaknesses, revolutionize their outlook, identify themselves with the masses. In October 1944, Mao Zedong clearly put forward in his article "The United Front in Cultural Work": “There are two principles for the cultural united front: the first is to unite, and the second is to criticize, educate and transform.” Since then, "unity, education and remolding” has become the Party's basic policy to solve the question of intellectuals. Since beginning of the War of Liberation period to the beginning of the founding of New China, the Central Committee of the CPC and some central departments of the Party made many directives on the issue of intellectuals, using the phrase of "strive for, uniting, educating and remolding the intellectuals". In February 1956, the "Directive on Intellectuals" of the Central Committee of the CPC clearly pointed out: "Before and after the liberation of the whole country, the Central Committee of the CPC attached great importance to the issue of intellectuals and formulated and implemented the policy of uniting, educating and remolding intellectuals.”

After the founding of New China, naturally most of the intellectuals came from the old society and they had received bourgeois education. Therefore, the Party should not only strive for and unite intellectuals, but also educate and remold them ideologically so that intellectuals can adapt to the needs of revolution and construction. The main methods of ideological remolding of intellectuals included: firstly, Marxist education; secondly, participating in the practice of revolution and construction, besides uniting with workers and peasants; thirdly, carrying out the method of accepting criticism and self-criticism.

The principles and policies of "unity, education and remolding" was formed by the CPC on the basis of summing up the experience of ideological transformation of intellectuals when recruiting them to the the Party and the Army, besides in the practice of striving for, uniting and educating intellectuals in the society. This policy was the product of the combination of Marxist theory on ideological remolding of the intellectuals and Chinese reality, and achieved positive results.

The implementation of this policy aroused the enthusiasm of the intellectuals and enabled them play an important role in China's revolution and construction periods.