The older technical personnel are the legacy of the Kuomintang; they are
very highly skilled, but they are, as yet, [politically] unreliable; we should strive
to unite them [to our side].
The majority of the university and middle school students throughout the
country are children of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie; they too, are the
legacy of the Kuomintang. However, we must cultivate them and transform
them. One section of them is reliable, but there is another section that is unreliable.
The most important task for us all the present moment is to cultivate the
backbone of the technical cadre. The most important thing is to cultivate the
intellectuals who have been in our party, and our armed forces for over a decade. Another sector consists of the intellectuals who are participating in [the

work of] land reform; we can transfer some of them to undergo training.
Another part [of our technical cadre] can be cultivated from among [people
who are at the] accelerated middle schools for industrial workers and peasants
and from among the children of workers and peasants. In other words, we
would like to get some people from the ranks of these two latter categories
and cultivate them, after which they will be used to unite with the two other
categories of people mentioned earlier.
Source: Kexue Geming (Revolution in the Sciences), Red Guard Publication,