[Column] The unspoken deal that made China a nation led by engineers

China's transformation into a nation led by engineers is a story that began with a paradoxical shift in the country's perception of engineers. For decades, engineers were viewed with distrust, and intellectuals were seen as the ruling class. However, this changed in the 1950s when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formalized the concept of "being both red and expert." This meant that cadres needed to possess both political loyalty and technical expertise to effectively govern.

Tsinghua University played a crucial role in this transformation. Under President Jiang Nanxiang, the university implemented a system of political counselors who were academically outstanding students. These students were expected to perform political tasks while maintaining their technical expertise. Jiang Nanxiang's vision was to unify these two aspects of society, ensuring that engineering graduates would eventually become the leaders of China.

The Cultural Revolution, however, dealt a severe blow to this initiative. The radical faction of the Cultural Revolution saw cadres who were both red and expert as a "new bourgeoisie" that had caused the Soviet Union to degenerate into revisionism. As a result, many academics and "red and expert" cadres were exiled, and university admission was no longer based on exams but on recommendations.

This change in admissions policy led to a surge in college graduates among CCP members, with the share of college graduates increasing from 26% in 1977 to 99% in 2002.

Deng Xiaoping's statement in 1980, "Being an expert doesn't automatically make one red, but being red means striving to be an expert," essentially transformed the "red and expert" principle. While Mao had believed that expertise could prevent the delegation of governance to experts, Deng considered expertise a core qualification for governing.

This shift allowed engineers to rise to the top positions in the Chinese Communist Party, with eight out of nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee in 2002 having majored in engineering.

In summary, China's shift from a country of workers, peasants, and revolutionaries to one of engineers loyal to the CCP was not a smoothly implemented plan but rather the paradoxical consequence of the failed ideal of a classless society. The Cultural Revolution had disrupted the academic and professional classes that had existed before the People's Republic of China, and the ruling class of the post-Mao era emerged as victims of mass revolutionary politics.