Surviving By Changing Into A National University:a Research On Chenghua University(1945-1952)

In the late Qing Dynasty,Chinese people advocated the establishment of private universities for the purpose of "academic warfare" with the West.With the benefit of hindsight,the private university eventually "failed in China" and "why it could not survive in our country" is worthy of discussion.The private university established by Chinese always considered itself to be responsible for Some kind of educational or social ideal and private universities also once took a very important position in higher education of the Republic of China.With the establishment of the national education and culture budget of Nanjing National Government,the national university had achieved "using national finance to handle national universities" and completed the"re-nationalization".In contrast,private universities were at a disadvantage because of the lack of relatively stable financial resources,teachers and equipment.People also formed the envy of the national university of psychology."Change into a national university" became some private universities a survival strategy before and after the Anti-Japanese War.Private Kuanghua University Chengdu Branch had been taken over by the Sichuan local power after the victory of the war and renamed "Chenghua University",then Private Chenghua University was built.Students took this as an opportunity to launch a movement to ask the government to take over the private university,rationally chased the real benefits behind the name of "national university".The government could not respond to the request of students because of the limitation of the financial capacity,so the request of surviving by changing into a national university lurked temporarily.Chenghua University which became a localization University was controlled by the Sichuan local power and had to rely on local resources because it was far away from the central government.The social network in the politics,military and business sectors weaved by native managers was used to raise funds for the school,however,the funds raised in this way were either based on personal relationships or had a strong utilitarian purpose,and a one-time random donation-based,which were far from being able to meet the continuing needs of Chenghua University.The managers of Chenghua University not only held several posts simultaneously,and hired by several schools as manager,thus they could not be dedicated to school affairs.Chenghua University as a marginalization private university gradually stepped into a survival predicament and lost its school orientation because of the broken out of Chinese civil war,the local fiscal deterioration,sustained and vicious inflation,the light public consciousness and the school’s poor performance and so on.Private universities rely on social resources to run,away from the political struggle,should be in the edge of the national power system.But the campus space had also became a field of political struggle because there was a conflict between the local power and the local party forces of Sichuan.The survival crisis of the school became a magic weapon of a political mobilization,so a campaign launched by students to change Chenghua University into a national university occurred again and the school’s development had been greatly affected.Chenghua University was supervised and reformed by the new government after the 1949,obedienced to the education and construction of the Communist China.The school also actively met the government needs to highlight its departments of finance and economics as a school-running characteristic,and then continued to get funding from the Southwest Ministry of Culture and Education,and ultimately achieved nationalization.Western private universities always maintained the independence and autonomy and expanded adequate living space because of the dualistic structure of political and religious,autonomous traditions and mechanisms in the western society.Modern Chinese society was unable to resist the downward movement of state power,and failed to establish an effective public donation mechanisms.Private universities in modern china had to yield to the state power,and pursued the existence and development by Changing themselves into national universities.