From the late Qing on, some local elites tried to find ways to make farmers cleaner, better educated, less superstitious, and more technically proficient in agriculture (Duara 1991; Hayford 1990). One excellent example of this, discussed in Chapter 3, was the eager welcome that elites in Dingxian county, Hebei, extended to the Mass Education Movement in the early 1930s in the expectation that it would rid the peasants of what the elites saw as their embarrassing backwardness.
Source: wiktionary