International Journal of Psychology

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Development of psychology in china

Qicheng Jing

To cite this article: Qicheng Jing (1994) Development of psychology in china, International
Journal of Psychology, 29:6, 667-675, DOI: 10.1080/00207599408246557

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Published online: 24 Sep 2007.

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1994, 29 (6). 667-675

Development of Psychology in China

Qicheng Jing
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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The development of Chinese psychology is outlined according to various

historical periods. Emphasis is laid on the philosophical basis of Chinese
psychological thought and how social changes affect the development of
psychology. The development of psychology after the founding of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949 is described in relation to the political
and social changes in the country. China’s present national policy of
economic construction, reform, and openness to the outside world has
had a great impact on the advancement of psychology.

THE ANCIENT HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CHINESE

PSYCHOLOGY
Psychological thought in ancient China was contained in diverse philo-
sophical, educational, political, and other writings. As in Western phil-
osophy, there were disagreements about whether human nature is
fundamentally good or evil, the relation between the mind and the body,
and the extent to which nature or nurture determines human personality. A
distinctive feature of traditional Chinese philosophy was an emphasis on
education-developing proper personality characteristics through emulat-
ing models. The following is a brief review of how these themes were
expressed in the writings of several ancient Chinese philosophers.
The first figure to be mentioned is Confucius (551479 BC), the great
political thinker and pedagogue, founder of the Confucian School. He had a
profound influence on the development of China’s cultural history. Human
nature in ancient Chinese literature was called Xing. There were lengthy

Requests for reprints should be addressed to Qicheng Jing, Institute of Psychology,

Chinese Academy of Sciences. PO Box 1603. Beijing 100012, China.
Revised version of the contribution to the symposium on “The origins and development of
psychology in different countries and regions around the world”, co-organized by Kurt
Pawlik and Mark R. Rosenzweig at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological
Association. San Francisco, July 199 I .

Q 1994 International Union of Psychological Science

 668 JlNG

discussions about human nature in Chinese history. Confucius asserted that

“Human nature is the order of heaven.” This saying may be interpreted in
two different ways. First, that human nature is divine, determined by the
supreme deity. A second interpretation is that heaven means physical
nature, that human nature has developed from the natural environment.
In the Confucian view, humans are social animals whose mode of social
interaction is shaped by Li (convention or propriety), which establishes
value distinctions and determines behaviour in response to those distinc-
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tions. Therefore, the goal of education should be to cultivate Li, and the
Confucian method of education was based on the behavioural tendency to
imitate models. A good illustration of the importance placed on imitating
models in Confucian philosophy comes from the upbringing of his succes-
sor, Mencius. The mother of Mencius was so concerned about the models
to which he was exposed, that she moved the family three times in search
of better neighbours. Sages, or superior people who have mastered Li, are
the models of behaviour from which people learn. The ruler himself should
be such a model and he should appoint people who are models to high
offices. With practice, all people could act in accordance with Li and
become sages. At that point they have acquired Ren (humanity), the
highest level of moral development. With Dao (the way), the harmony
between the natural and social aspects of human nature is achieved.
Mencius (468-3 12 BC), a contemporary of Aristotle, agreed with
Confucius that human nature is determined by heaven, asserting that
“The bodily organs with their functions belong to our heaven-conferred
nature.” Mencius’ psychological thought and educational philosophy were
based on the belief that human nature is fundamentally good. When
Confucius discussed human nature, he did not mention whether it was
good or bad, but Mencius claimed that humans were born with a good
nature. He said, “The goodness of human nature is like water flowing
downwards.” In his view, everyone is born with the sentiments of pity,
shame, respect, and justice. From these sentiments are developed the four
social attitudes of benevolence, justice, propriety, and wisdom. Here we
see the nativistic view of human morality.
A very different view of human nature was proposed by another scholar,
Xun Zi (298-238 BC), who devoted about a quarter of his writings to
psychology. He not only contributed to the development of psychology,
but he also had a great impact on later Chinese materialism. Some Western
scholars called Xun Zi the Chinese Aristotle. He saw human nature as the
result of the evolution of objective nature. He proposed the trinity of
nature, feeling, and desire. According to him, “Nature is the outcome of
heaven; feeling is the essence of nature; and desire is the response of
feeling to things.” By nature he meant cognition and perception: “The
ears, eyes, nose, mouth and body function together in all kinds of combina-
 DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN CHINA 669

tions, and yet none of them can replace another.” He described feelings as
“the love, dislike, happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy of nature.” Xun Zi
proposed that human nature is malevolent. He said, “Human nature is evil,
the goodness of human nature is false.” “Human nature strives for the
acquisition of wealth; for the satisfaction of the senses. If human nature is
allowed to run its course, struggle and violence will result.” He therefore
stressed that humans must have education-must follow social norms-
only then can society be in order.
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A neutral view on the goodness of human nature was put forward by Gao
Zi (about 300 BC), a student of Mencius. He argued with Mencius and said,
“life is human nature,” stressing that nature is a property innate in humans.
Gao Zi saw human nature as neither ‘good nor evil. He explained, “Man’s
nature is like water whirling round, if one opens a passage for it to the east,
it will flow to the east; if a passage to the west, it will flow to the west.
Man’s nature is indifferent to good and evil, just as water is indifferent to
east and west.” That is to say, human nature can follow the path for good,
or can follow the path for evil. Whether one is good or evil is determined
by the path taken in social life and not by innate moral inclinations. Here
we see the theory of the plasticity of human nature in early times.
The thinkings of these ancient Chinese philosophers may exemplify the
historical roots of present-day psychology. Human nature, or the nature of
the mind, the mind-body problem, and the relation between nature and
nurture have always been topics for discussion in Chinese philosophy.
These issues, when thoroughly explored, may give us new insights into
the understanding of the human mind (see Gao, 1986).

MODERN CHINESE PSYCHOLOGY

Modern Chinese scientific psychology came into existence only after China
had more contacts with the West. Chinese students who had studied in the
West brought back ideas fundamental to modern psychology and translated
Western books. In 1889, Yan Yongjing translated Joseph Haven’s Menral
philosophy (1875) from a Japanese version. In 1907, Wang Guowei trans-
lated Harold Hoffding’s Psychologie in Umrissen auf der Grundlage der
E$ahrung. Psychology as an independent scientific discipline was first
taught in some Chinese pedagogical institutions during the late Qing
dynasty (circa 1900). The Chinese educational reformer, Cai Yuanpei,
who had studied at Wilhelm Wundt’s Laboratory in Leipzig and who later
became President of Beijing University, promoted the establishment of the
first psychology laboratory at Beijing University in 1917. In 1921, the
Chinese Psychological Society was founded and the first journal appeared
in 1922. With the introduction of the Western-educational system into
China, psychology also expanded rapidly. Around this period, many
 670 JlNG

departments of psychology were established in Chinese universities and

several psychological societies were founded: the Society of Psychological
Testing, the Society of Psychoanalysis, and the Society of Mental Hygiene.
The main influences in the 1930s were Functionalism and Behaviourism,
although Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis were also introduced into
China. The outbreak of the Sin-Japanese War, in 1937, caused a serious
setback in the progress of Chinese psychology. Major universities were
moved to the west of China, and with the shortages of books and equip-
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ment, the development of psychology was halted. This lasted until the end
of the Second World War.
The People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. As psychology in
China before 1949 was mainly Western oriented, after the founding of the
People’s Republic, Chinese psychologists started a movement for reform
and searched for independence from Western influences. The new psych-
ology took Marxist dialectical materialism as its guiding principle; Soviet
psychology was looked upon as the model for Chinese psychology, and
Pavlovian theory was seen as the physiological basis of human behaviour.
As in the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, there were no independent
departmepts of psychology in Chinese universities. Psychology was a
secondary discipline in the departments of philosophy or education. It
was only 30 years later, after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, that inde-
pendent departments of psychology were re-established in Chinese univer-
sities. There are now five departments of psychology in major universities,
and psychology courses are offered in almost all pedagogical universities
and colleges. The Institute of Psychology, established in 1956 under the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, now plays a central role in conducting
research related to the basic problems in psychology. The Chinese Psycho-
logical Society has about 3000 members and publishes 3 journals.
Marxism stressed that human beings are social beings, constantly under
the influences of society, and that mind is a reflection of the material and
social world in which one lives. According to Mao Tzedong, sensory
knowledge, which is acquired through the senses, is the first level of
knowledge. Rational knowledge, formed by a process of abstraction and
generalization, and enriched through practice, is a higher level of know-
ledge. Consciousness is a mental reflection of objective reality. Reflection
is an approximate representation of the outer world. As knowledge
deepens through practice, mental representation becomes a truer picture
of objective reality, but can never be an exact copy of it.
Because the social environment determines one’s social conduct, the
person living in a society is imprinted with ideological characteristics
specific to his or her culture. Consciousness is a reflection of the ways of
human interactions within a given social environment. During the first
three decades of the People’s Republic, Western social psychology and
 DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN CHINA 671

psychological testing were abolished on the grounds that the former

ignored the class nature of social groups, and the latter stressed too heavily
individual differences rather than social differences.
Among the various fields of psychology, developmental psychology was
a main area of study. Many studies were done along Piagetian lines; a
series of papers appeared on the development of children’s concepts of
number, class, colour, shape, directions, and cause and effect. The practical
aims of developmental study were stressed in the hope that the results
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could be applied to education. Thus many papers were published on the age
characteristics of young children, and how teaching materials should be
arranged to cope with children’s developmental stages. The Chinese
language as an ideographic language, with its unique writing and structure
system, has attracted much attention in attempts to understand its acquisi-
tion and developmental processes. Another area of research is the study of
supernormal (talented) and mentally retarded children. A scale was con-
structed for the assessment of the mentally retarded. The supernormal
children are identified by various cognitive traits. The areas of develop-
mental and educational psychology have always been lively fields of
research in China; about half of the 3000 Chinese psychologists work in
normal universities or pedagogical institutes. They are involved with either
developmental psychology or educational psychology.
As experimental psychology was less affected by ideology, studies of
perception, memory, and learning attracted consistent interest. Studies
were made also in the neuropsychological field. For detailed accounts of
Chinese psychology in this period, see Jing (1984) and Petzold (1987).

THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

In spite of the fact that psychology developed through the course of more
than 40 years, there were several occasions when psychology was under
attack by leftist ideologists. In 1958 there was a campaign “criticizing the
bourgeois direction in psychology.” The criticism was aimed at “bio-
logization” and “abstractionism” in psychology. Biologization meant
reductionism, and abstraction meant basic research with controlled experi-
ments. The argument was that, because human existence is social, explana-
tions at a physiological level could never interpret human behaviour. If
behaviour is explained in terms of needs, drives, and conditioning, then
behaviour would lose its social meaning. Marxist philosophy explains
human behaviour in terms of economic and social determinents. Because
human behaviour is always carried out in a complex social context, with
current and historical causes, how can the results of experimental
psychology ever explain the causes of human conduct?
 672 JlNG

In basic research in psychology, many experiments without practical

significance were conducted in the laboratory; controlled variables are
simply non-existent in real-life situations. A Third World, socialist country
cannot afford a science that cannot produce positive effects on its national
development. Thus the role of basic research in psychology was chal-
lenged. The question was often asked: Is psychology a necessary disci-
pline or is it simply a ‘‘luxury’’ science? In a developing country like China
with a vast population and modest resources, should a luxury science of
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psychology be developed at all? These attacks on psychology, although

they did not last very long, set the stage for the liquidation of psychology a
decade later during the Cultural Revolution.
The greatest turmoil in psychology occurred between 1966 and 1976,
the period of the well-known Cultural Revolution. Psychology was
attacked as a so-called bourgeois pseudoscience. The main charges made
in this attack were those stated earlier. This time psychology was uprooted
completely as a scientific discipline. Leading psychologists were labelled
as “reactionary academic authorities,” scientific research and teaching
institutions were dissolved, and psychologists were dispatched to remote
areas of the country to work on the farms. The disaster ended with the
termination of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

THE REFORM AND OPENNESS POLICY OF CHINA

Soon after the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended, China launched, in
1979, a policy of reform and openness to the outside world. This has
pushed Chinese psychology into a new era. The nation was called upon
to work for the cause of the Four Modernizations: modernizations in
industry, agriculture, science and technology, and defence (Jing, 1984).
The reform policy has opened up Chinese psychology to new fields of
research, and Chinese psychology has since moved into the international
community. The Chinese Psychological Society joined the International
Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) in 1980. Many Chinese psychol-
ogists visited other countries, and psychologists from abroad visited China
and lectured in China’s universities. In 1983, Nobel laureate Herbert Simon
visited the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and
lectured for three months in cognitive psychology. Exchanges were
established between foreign universities and Chinese universities.
As a result of the opening up, cognitive psychology was quickly adopted
as a new orientation in Chinese psychology. Studies in memory, learning,
and artificial intelligence increased. The cognitive approach has penetrated
into many fields of psychology. For example, in educational psychology
the moral qualities of students are cultivated through the education of
moral cognition, moral feeling, and moral beliefs. In the promotion of
 DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN CHINA 673

teaching effects, the emphasis is on motivation and training in metacog-

nition. In clinical psychology, the influence of cognitive factors is also
being considered. The Chinese language with its ideographic characters
became a subject of great interest, and studies included the ideographic and
sound characteristics of Chinese characters, the relationship between
Chinese language and Western language, the hemispheric laterality of
the information processing of the Chinese language, and reading and
comprehension of the Chinese language. Exciting findings were reported
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in this field, and Chinese psychologists are organizing research efforts in

the hope of making some breakthroughs. These studies can also be
applied to artificial intelligence, school education, and industrial technol-
ogy, such as the input of Chinese characters for computers.
Developmental psychology is another area of intensive study. There are
300 million children in China, and any new knowledge acquired in this
field would have implications for the education and cultivation of China’s
new generation. Since the early 1980s, Piaget’s genetic theory of develop-
ment has had a great impact on Chinese developmental psychology.
Collaborative research teams were organized from various universities
and institutes to study the mental characteristics of children at different
age levels. Abundant material was published on the develoment of lan-
guage, and the concept of number in Chinese children. These contributions
were applied to improve the teaching of language and mathematics to
primary school children. China’s family planning policy advocates the
“only child” programme (only one child per family). The cognitive
and social development of these “only children” are being studied by
Chinese psychologists. Since China is a multi-nationality country, cross-
cultural developmental research is also carried out. Other areas of basic
research, such as neuropsychology, also expanded. For details of Chinese
psychological research during this period, see Zhang (1987) and Wang
(1 993).
In 1949, social psychology was labelled a pseudoscience in opposition
to historical materialism, which is the study of social development accord-
ing to Marxism. Only after the Cultural Revolution was it recognized that
social psychology is a scientific discipline which can contribute to China’s
modernization process. Moral values, crimes, juvenile delinquency, group
dynamics, leadership, and decision making are all topics of study. In the
past, the Chinese Government laid stress on raising the level of socialist
ethics, particularly among the young generation. The measures taken are to
promote political and ideological education and to cultivate socialist, moral
values. Learning from the idealized model behaviour of well-known
persons showed good results, as illustrated by the “Learn from Lei
Feng” movement. These measures are intended to educate the people
and foster revolutionary ideals.
 674 JlNG

Hence, social psychology can contribute to the promotion of a healthy

society. However, because social psychology is a new field in China, how
one is to implement social research with behavioural science methods is
still a problem for young researchers. Training workshops are needed to
improve research work in this field.
In recent years, psychologists have become aware of the importance of
psychological testing. After 30 years of suspension, psychological testing
was rehabilitated, and various Western tests have been revised and
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adapted for Chinese use. Some tests have been used as psychodiagnostic
tools. Chinese psychologists are now aware that revising Western tests is
not enough; it is necessary to construct tests specifically suited to the
Chinese culture. Progress is underway to design new tests for children
and for personality assessment. With economic development in China,
tests are not only used in educational and clinical fields, but also in the
industrial sector. Now some enterprizes are using tests for the assessment
of professional abilities and interests for the selection of personnel.
The Four Modernizations have opened up new opportunities for applied
research. Psychologists work in practical fields in which psychology can
make effective contributions. Besides the traditional fields of education and
clinical psychology, other applied fields, such as ergonomics, managerial
psychology, and health psychology, also became important fields of study.
The economic reform of China calls for the introduction of new methods of
management in industrial enterprizes. Incentive and motivational studies
were carried out to promote efficiency. Managerial assessment methods are
being introduced from Western countries. Industrial psychology is being
developed in China. Counselling is becoming popular in China, especially
to the younger generation.
China is a socialist country with a planned economy, but it has also
recently adopted a market economy. The development of science and
technology is guided by national policy. From the recent development of
Chinese psychology, it is evident that psychology is closely related to
China’s national policy and social changes. In 1992, the Chinese Govern-
ment started a new movement to make economic construction its central
task, and to take bolder steps in its reform and openness to the rest of the
world. In order to achieve all-round modernization, China is to draw on the
achievements of civilization the world over, and to assimilate any
advanced scientific and technological achievements from other countries.
This new campaign will inevitably promote the development of Chinese
science and technology. Chinese psychology, a discipline strongly affected
by national policy and social environment, is going to seize this opportunity
to develop itself.
 DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN CHINA 675

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