The term originated during the Yuan dynasty where the Mongol conquerors identified ten "castes" of Chinese: bureaucrats, officials, Buddhist monks, Taoist priests, physicians, workers, hunters, prostitutes, (ninth) Confucian scholars and finally beggars, with only beggars at a status below the intellectuals.[1][3]
Mao Zedong's distrust towards intellectuals was evident even before the Cultural Revolution.[6][9][10][11][12] For example, during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957–1959, tens of thousands of intellectuals were persecuted.[6][13][14] The name "bourgeois intellectual" became a standard phrase in Mao's time.[15][16] During the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were called the "Stinking Old Ninth" and were subjected to condemnation, purge, imprisonment and even execution.[9][11][15][17] In May 3, 1975, Mao made the following comments at his meeting with members of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party:[18][19]
In the fields of education, science, literature and art, and medicine, where intellectuals are concentrated, there are some good [people], and there are a few Marxist-Leninists. You [at the] Ministry of Foreign Affairs [are at] a place where intellectuals are concentrated, am I wrong? You two are stinking intellectuals, you should admit this, being the stinking old ninth category, the old ninth category cannot [just] walk away.
After the Cultural Revolution, in August 1977, Deng Xiaoping mentioned in a meeting that it was the Gang of Four who came up with the phrase and that Mao himself saw intellectuals as still having some value in society.[20]
^Deng Xiaoping (1984). "Mao Zedong Thought Must be Correctly Understood as an Integral Whole". Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. Vol. 2. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.