Communist Party \u2018exerting stronger control over universities,\u2019 says professor (Wall Street Journal) \u2013 China may have poured billions into making its universities more globally competitive, but its idea of a quality education is guided more than ever by the Communist Party. In a drumbeat that…<\/b>
\nCommunist Party \u2018exerting stronger control over universities,\u2019 says professor
(Wall Street Journal) \u2013 China may have poured billions into making its universities more globally competitive, but its idea of a quality education is guided more than ever by the Communist Party.
In a drumbeat that has accelerated ahead of October\u2019s twice-a-decade Party Congress, President Xi Jinping\u2019s campaign to rein in civil society, online media and speech has extended to the classroom.
Top universities seen as insufficiently rigorous in their ideological work are being shamed. Professors who speak out are punished. The government is sending observers to nearly 2,600 universities to monitor mandatory ideology classes, which include staples like \u201c Mao Zedong thought.\u201d
\u201cWhat they most want to see is whether what you\u2019re saying is in line with the official demands on ideology and values,\u201d said Xiao Wei, who will be sitting in on classes in Shanghai this fall as part of a group of some 100 professors examining the quality of ideological education in the city. \u201cThey also want to understand how effective [the classes] are,\u201d said Mr. Xiao, a professor of Marxism at Shanghai\u2019s elite Fudan University.
Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the party has kept colleges on a tight leash, fearing a reprise of student-led demonstrations. Nevertheless, there had been some room to deal with sensitive topics in the classroom. Under Mr. Xi, that narrow space is closing.
For years in his class on China\u2019s Cultural Revolution at Beijing\u2019s prestigious Tsinghua University, Tang Shaojie played \u201cred\u201d songs from the era and showed the movie \u201cNineteen Eighty-Four\u201d based on George Orwell\u2019s novel. The goal, he told students, was to teach them what brainwashing looked like, former students said.
Mr. Tang told them it was a sign of academic freedom that Tsinghua allowed him to teach the class, said Aaron Feng, who took it in 2015 and is now studying at Vanderbilt University. \u201cHe said it really proudly.\u201d
The class was canceled this fall. Tsinghua didn\u2019t respond to questions about why.
\u201cIt\u2019s not enough just to have economic development,\u201d said Mr. Xiao of Fudan University, explaining the country\u2019s recent emphasis on ideological education. \u201cYou need a sense of values and morals.\u201d
The shift in the classrooms comes as President Xi moves to extend his dominance ahead of the Party Congress, a conclave set to anoint him for a second five-year term.
Mr. Xi in December declared that universities should become \u201cstrongholds that adhere to party leadership,\u201d and that\u2014amid increasing collaboration with Western universities and more Chinese students studying abroad\u2014China should develop its own vision of education guided by its unique history.
The Ministry of Education has declared 2017 a key year for enhancing the quality of ideological education\u2014an area where classes have long been seen as turgid affairs. Officials are trying to shed that image, encouraging teachers to make lessons more engaging, while giving such classes greater academic weight.
In the northeast city of Tianjin, authorities announced plans to hire 1,300 workers to deepen ideological education in 16 universities. Beijing has long required colleges to employ at least one full-time ideology teacher for every 350-400 undergraduate students, but in practice, many schools have fallen short of that goal.
Along with attempts to improve lessons come warnings against stepping out of line. Students at Sun Yat-sen University in southern China arrived this year to find new instructions affixed to classroom walls telling them not to criticize party leadership; their professors were advised to do the same.
An associate professor at an elite Beijing university said he was told he was rejected for promotion because of social-media posts that were critical of China\u2019s political system. \u201cNow I don\u2019t speak much online,\u201d he said.
This summer, the party\u2019s discipline inspection agency, in the first report of its kind, criticized 14 top Chinese universities for what the agency said was weak party leadership and poor ideological work.
Since the February release of a State Council document calling for stronger party leadership in schools, at least 30 top-tier universities have tapped university presidents to also take on the role of deputy party secretary. Such joint appointments had taken place before, but the pace has accelerated in recent months.
Over the past two decades, Chinese universities have invested in raising their global standing, and over a dozen U. S. schools have founded degree-granting institutions with Chinese universities. But any hopes that China would in time allow more academic freedom have dimmed under Mr. Xi.
\u201cThere\u2019s no question the party is exerting stronger control over universities,\u201d said Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University, who studies Chinese higher education. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a real backtracking.\u201d
Chinese scholars say government-restricted access to the internet and overseas scholarship have put them at a disadvantage. Li Tao, a postdoctoral fellow at Germany\u2019s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said that friends in China often ask him for help downloading articles they aren\u2019t able to access. \u201cIf you\u2019re working in the natural sciences or engineering, information changes really quickly, and you need to stay up-to-date,\u201d he said.
Sometimes articles are blocked because they contain sensitive content, he said, though on other occasions it is unclear why they are inaccessible.
Still, Mr. Li said he is contemplating an eventual return to China. \u201cThere are more opportunities\u201d than in the West, he said, including for funding and academic jobs.
One key component of Mr. Xi\u2019s call is to build up social sciences \u201cwith Chinese characteristics,\u201d outlined in a document issued by the party\u2019s Central Committee this spring. Since 2010, the number of grants for Marxism and party-related research from the National Social Science Fund of China has grown more than most areas, by 72%.
Some Chinese students have in years past been able to write dissertations about nonpolitical aspects of the Cultural Revolution era, such as fashion or gender relations, \u201cbut now even this isn\u2019t tolerated,\u201d said Michel Bonnin, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who specializes in the Cultural Revolution.
He said he felt fortunate that his book on Chinese youth sent to live in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution was published on the mainland in 2010. Today, he said, \u201cit would be more difficult.\u201d
More from Infowars:
www.wsj.com\/articles\/china-steps-up-ideology-drive-on-college-campuses-1506250801?mod=e2fb<\/p>\n