The Hiring of Rejects

Abstract

The official need to tackle urban unemployment and reform state establishments, together with unequal privileges granted by the state, formed the critical context for staff recruitment in the early People's Republic of China. This article, which examines hiring in secondary schools in Shanghai, shows that none of the elements mentioned was aimed at the political or technical needs of work organizations. As a result, the organizations that fell on the lower level of the socialist institutional hierarchy received staff members they did not want. In Shanghai secondary schools, large numbers of people whom the state considered politically suspicious or academically unprepared joined the faculty, even as the state was attempting to develop a system of socialist education. Their recruitment both accelerated the state's need to tighten political control in schools and damaged classroom teaching. The impact of this policy on the campus lasted well into the Cultural Revolution.