All educators must be staunch supporters of party governance, tells president in what experts called an effort to reassert control
Chinese authorities must intensify ideological controls on academia and turn universities into Communist party strongholds, President Xi Jinping has declared in a major address.
Higher education … must adhere to correct political orientation, Xi said in a high-profile speech to top party leaders and university chiefs that was delivered at a two-day congress on ideological and political work in Beijing.
Universities must be transformed into strongholds that adhere to party leadership and political education should be made more appealing, the president ordered, according to Xinhua, Chinas official news agency. Experts have described it as the most recent stage of Beijings bid to rein in opposition to its rule.
Xi, a populist strongman who recently reaffirmed his political authority by being proclaimed the partys core leader, told teachers needed to be both disseminators of advanced ideology and staunch supporters of[ party] governance.
Echoing a 1932 speech by Joseph Stalin the Chinese president told his audience teachers were engineers of the human spirit whose sacredmission was to help students improve in ideological quality, political awareness, moral characteristics and humanistic quality.
Party authorities should increase their contact with intellectuals in colleges, befriend them and sincerely listen to their sentiments, Xi added, pointing out that the partys education policies must be fully carried out.
Carl Minzner, an expert in Chinese law and politics from Fordham University in New York, told Xis speech appeared to signal the next phase of a decade-long campaign to wrest back control of areas it dreaded were getting out of control such as the media, public interest law and academia.
What you are seeing is a reassertion of ideological control since they are was of the view that colleges and schools are the hotbeds for ideas that are able to could be problematic; the notions of constitutionalism, ideas of liberalism. This is an effort to figure out, How do we get a tighter control over that? and it looks like this is definitely going to be rolling through all of Chinas colleges over the next couple of years. This is a big deal.
Universities have been coming under increasing pressure since 2014, when a party-run newspaper sent its reporters into classrooms and accused Chinese academics of not giving enough support to the countrys political system.
The atmosphere in higher education has been getting progressively colder over the last couple of years I think people have already begun get the message: You need to watch yourself, said Minzner.[ But] this is a signal that things are about to go to the next level.
The American scholar predicted the brunt of Xis ideological offensive would be felt by social science departments. The result would be growing self-censorship, the avoidance of politically sensitive research topics and a proliferation of academic examines into the speeches and policies of Xi, who became Chinas top leader in November 2012.
But the moves could also affect international schools in China, which have been facing growing scrutiny as part of a pushing to counter the propagation of western ideas, and the flow of Chinese students to higher education institutions in countries such as the US and Britain.
I think that you might start to see Chinese officials begin to think that this is not such a good thing, and begin to decide that it is less desirable and to begin to discourage that in certain ways, Minzner said. There is a fundamental contradiction between[ the expansion of international education] and the current direction in which the party is going.
Qiao Mu, an outspoken prof from Beijing Foreign Studies University, questioned whether Xis commands would have a real impact on campus life but said they were likely to influence Communist party officials working in universities.
Qiao, one of the victims of the crackdown on academia, told Chinese students had long had socialist values drilled into them by educators. Theyre already used to it.
These days, however, the greatest influence on Chinas youth was not socialism but social media, the scholar added.
Additional reporting by Christy Yao
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