During the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong pushed for the closure of Chinese universities, seeing higher education as little more than a breeding ground for counterrevolutionary bourgeois intellectuals. After closing for a period, China’s universities reopened on a limited basis from 1970, with selection criteria based on class background, revolutionary devotion and connections to the communist party.
It was not until 1977 that the national university entrance exam (gaokao) was reinstated and a merit system put back in place. This period had been China’s “Mao moment” in higher education, but Mao’s historic mistake appears to be repeating itself in the US today.
