The apparent attitude towards academics and highly educated people above is very similar to that of Mao Zedong. When he attempted to implement policies partially to make the above point, it ushered in the Cultural Revolution where academics and highly educated people were encouraged to be targeted for violently beatings, persecutions, and sent to the countryside as forced labor on rural farms and factories.
One can make a bit of a comparison between what happened to academics/highly educated folks and how the violent jocky Alpha Beta fraternity boys bullied/beaten up the “nerds” in the “Revenge of the Nerds” movies.
My great uncle and aunt…both STEM Profs at a Beijing area U and their two daughters got to experience this firsthand…and saw the end result:
1 Educational activities/research from K-university effectively ceased to function for 10 years.
- University admissions policies were changed(elimination of national college entrance exams) to favor students from rural farmer/laborer backgrounds(salt of the earth folks)....even if they were functionally illiterate.
- Once the Cultural Revolution ended, university alums who were admitted/attended during the Cultural Revolution ended up having university credentials regarded as highly suspect by public and private sector employers. Several older relatives recount being warned to be on the lookout for Mainland applicants who attended college in that era and to avoid hiring them because their education levels were substandard/nonexistent. One way some of those students/alums got around this issue is to secure admission to respectable/elite overseas grad schools such as those here in the US.