Shaanbei Public School: The first, insist on the direction of politics; The second, is to work hard and stride to the end. During the past seventeen years, when the communist group met extraordinary hardship and still insisted on their political direction, the struggling hardship became the whole communist tradition, and Cheng Fangwu is just this kind of man." on April 1, 1938 at Opening Ceremony speech of the 2nd graduating year On May 21, 1976, one of the Communist Leader, Marshal Zhu De, age 90, visited Cheng Fangwu at Central Communist School and said to him, "It is important to understand Marxism. For this purpose we need a good translated book and your translated book (Cheng's 1976 translated book Communist Manifesto) is easy to understand. This good job has a worldwide meaning." Chinese leader, Chan Wing said in 1986: "Cheng Fangwu is our civil revolutionist, loyal warrior, educator, and social scientist." Background Note 长征教育 Cheng Fangwu is a unique Chinese Communist Party Elder (元老). He was among the earliest well-known intellectual to overtly ally with Mao Zedong, well before many other political and military leaders. Mao gave him the job of educating the party cadre at the beginning of the Long March even though he was trained in military science in Tokyo. Under the Chinese Communist system, there is a party cadre (commisar) at every level next to a military commander or a civilian manager. This is the party secretary (书记) who has power over personnel decision on the basis of party loyalty and "ideological purity". The consequence is of course rampant pure politics without regard to job skills. During the Long March and in earlier years, many talented military officers were basically illiterate or barely literate. Cheng's schools and university on the march produced literate cadres who were next to the commanders. Under common duress, they provided practical written communications for widely dispersed military forces. Also by all accounts Cheng's personal example was to focus on reality and not on personnel politics even though he was a committed Marxist. Consequently, the cadre schools and university undoubted fulfilled an important function. Once the People's Republic was established in 1949, the party gained control of the entire education system and everything else. With no existential threat and only internal political strife, the worst aspects of the cadre system gained ascendancy from the early 1960s to 1978. With the "open policies" of