Fei Xiao Tong

November 2, 1910 April 24, 2005

Chinese anthropologist and

public intellectual

Who was Fei Xiao Tong?

Fei Xiao Tong was one of China's best
known and respected anthropologists.
His doctoral thesis, supervised by the
functionalist anthropologist Bronislaw
Malinowski at the London School of
Economics, was published as Peasant Life
in China (1939)
In his preface, Malinowski described the
book as ..a landmark in the development
of anthropological field-work and theory.
Among Fei Xiaotong's contributions to
anthropology is the concept that Chinese

Who was Fei Xiao Tong?

This brought him recognition outside China
and he lectured in Britain and in the USA
before returning to take up an academic
post at Tsinghua University. This was
enhanced with the publication in the USA
of Earthbound China (1945) and Chinas
Gentry (1953).
A patriotic Chinese who recognized the
need both for Chinas modernization and
for her protection against imperialism, Fei
regarded himself as an intellectual bridge
between Chinese culture and Western

Who was Fei Xiao Tong?

He became politically active through the
China Democratic League, a party of
intellectuals. This saw itself a rational
middle way between the nationalist
Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
In March 1949, Fei did not flee to Taiwan
as did so many other academics, but
remained at Tsinghua. He believed,
perhaps naively, that he could give critical
support to the communists in the
construction of a new China.
1949 was, he said later, a year of
revelation during which he understood

Fei Xiao Tong

as Public Intellectual

In 1950 he joined the newly established

Central Institute of Nationalities and began
an active life of public service.
He also acquired public recognition
through his popular articles on current
public issues This began his first period as
a public intellectual in which he argued
the potential of the social sciences for
Chinas development.
For example, Feis analysis of village
society and economy in his ethnographies
convinced him that rural industry was

Fei Xiao Tong as Public

Intellectual
It was Feis many
lively and popular

articles which brought him both public

recognition and official notoriety in China,
as his detailed ethnographies were to
remain unpublished until after the Mao
Zedong period.
In fact, after 1949, Fei and other Westerntrained academics were an endangered
species, with the social sciences abolished
as university disciplines.
During the Hundred Flowers period Fei was
outspoken during the red or expert
controversy when political ideology was

The Hundred Flowers

In the two articles, A few words on
sociology and Early Spring weather for
intellectuals, written for a public
readership in February and in March, 1957,
Fei argued for the restoration of the social
sciences as academic disciplines and
called on academics to be outspoken and
active in public life.
He and others like him were subjected to a
storm of political criticism and abuse,
often from former colleagues in public
articles such as Criticizing Fei Xiao Tongs
comprador sociology and The sinister and

The Cultural Revolution

His academic work was attacked for its
foreign imperialist inspiration and he was
accused of litism and of class arrogance.
Fei bent before the storm. In an address to
the National Peoples Congress on 13th July
1957, published as A Confession to the
People, (The Dilemma, 1979) Fei admitted
his political guilt.
I deeply detest what I have done, and I
must change my viewpoint...I am grateful
to the Party for unhesitatingly opening
wide the doors of reform and for

The Cultural Revolution

During the Cultural Revolution, after being
stripped of his honours and status, he
spent two and a half years undergoing
political re-education in a 7th May Cadre
School.
Fei Xiao Tong disappeared from view and
many outside China believed him to be
dead. He had in fact returned quietly to
the Central Institute of Nationalities.
In 1964 he was even elected a member of
the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative
Committee.

The Return of the Public

Intellectual
In 1972 a delegation from the Committee
of Concerned Asian Anthropologists met
him there and reported this in Current
Anthropology.
In the years that followed, China
experienced dramatic changes, especially
following the Deng Xiao Peng era and the
Opening Up of China.
Many of the issues with which Fei had
been concerned once again became
current and this enabled him to return as a
well-known academic and influential public

The Return of the Public

Intellectual

Fei took a leading part in the

reconstruction of Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences in post-Mao China and was
Professor of Sociology at Peking University
until his death in 2005. His books and
articles were re-published in China and
abroad. Two in particular, examples of his
popular writing, are considered briefly
here, as illustrating Fei Xiao Tong as a
public intellectual.
The dilemma of a Chinese intellectual
(1979).

Towards a Peoples
Anthropology
...under our social system, theory is linked
with practice; in a society where science is
made to serve politics, it is necessary for a
scientific worker to estimate the effects of
his work on society. This is not just a
question of personal morality but also a
question of what is good or bad for the
majority of the people. Only when the
truthfulness of theories is being constantly
examined in practice can we steadily push
research work in a scientific direction and
make it a prime mover of social progress

Towards a Peoples
Anthropology
To train and educate national cadres
means to train and educate outstanding
members from the laboring masses of the
minorities who are closely bound by flesh
and blood with their own people, fully
acquainted with the latters language and
conditions, and knowing how to impart a
rational understanding of actuality and to
help them get organized and show a
whole-hearted devotion to their own
peoples well-being. The social reform of
Chinas minorities was successfully

From the Soil

Rural people not only know each other
intimately; they also get to know other
aspects of rural life equally
well...Knowledge acquired from familiarity
is specific and is not deduced from
abstract general principles. People who
grow up in a familiar environment do not
need such principles. They only need to
know the specific relationship between
means and ends within the scope of their
activities. They do not seek universal
truths. (p. 45).

From the Soil

The basic methods of human interaction
in rural society rest on familiarity...These
methods cannot be used with a stranger.
China is undergoing a rapid transformation
that is changing a fundamentally rural
society into a modern one. The way of life
that has been cultivated in rural society is
now giving rise to abuses. Created by
strangers, modern society cannot
incorporate the customary basis of rural
society. Rejecting the customary ways of
rural life, modern people denigrate

What is a Public Intellectual?

To be a public intellectual it is not enough
to simply be a celebrity, which Fei Xiao
Tong certainly was.
A public intellectual also seeks to influence
opinion and policy for the public good in a
consistent and pro bono way through the
popular dissemination of professional
expertise.
Fei again certainly attempted this and in
the specific conditions of Maoist and postMaoist China. His experience raises
fundamental questions about the role and

What is a Public Intellectual?

As a popular educator his aim was to
highlight general trends. He repeatedly
argued the case for applied sociology and
anthropology in China if modernization
was to succeed. He published accessible
articles and books on rural
industrialization, small towns, national
minorities, and on developing frontier
areas.
An example is the influence he brought on
the Chinese government to promote rural
industry, the rapid growth of which in the

What is a Public Intellectual?

In an interview published in Current
Anthropology (1988, pp. 661-662), Fei
observed:
Now I have support from the population,
from the farmers themselves, and that
gives me a sense of worth and confidence.
Confidence comes from society, from
social influence!...I am getting new ideas,
very practical ideas, and am encouraged
by others, by people with responsibility.
They appreciate that we sociologists have
the ability to point out important
relationships, to describe functional

Conclusion
Robert Redfield described Fei as: A man
who has written widely, talked much and
acted fearlessly toward the solution of the
immense social problems of China. Fei
regarded anthropology and sociology as
tools for the public good and his
intellectual mission as being to ensure that
they were used as such.
Certainly, after 1980, his life was once
again that of the public intellectual, with
influential appointments, such as deputy
chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political

Conclusion
Fei continued as a leading Chinese
academic until his death, writing, lecturing
and also broadcasting. He travelled,
including outside China and received
international honours such as the
Malinowski Medal and the Huxley
Memorial Medal.
He has, however, a further significance as
a prominent Chinese public intellectual
both before and after the Cultural
Revolution. It should be noted that, while
his first period was marked by optimism,
his second was characterized by caution

Some Books
The dilemma of a Chinese
Intellectual, (translated by J.P.
McGough, M. E. Sharpe, New York,
1979.
Towards a peoples anthropology,
New World Press, Beijing, 1981.
From the soil: the origins of Chinese
society, University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1992.
Fei Xiaotong and sociology in
revolutionary China, R.D. Arkush,

Thank You!

W. J. Morgan

john.morgan@nottingham.ac.uk