Financial Times: Ideological Purge for China Universities

Societies invest in education for jobs, innovations, creativity and prosperity. Western universities, a tremendous source of soft power, attract students from around the world. Recognizing the value of cross-border learning, universities in China organized joint programs with foreign institutions. But the strongest education programs engage in critical thinking and that challenges ideology. China’s Central Commission for Discipline has sent agents to Chinese campuses, including those with joint programs, for inspections. “Apart from evidence of corruption in academia, the CCDI teams will be looking for examples of breaches of ‘political discipline,’ including ideological problems and infiltration of ‘western values’ such as democracy and freedom of speech,” reports Emily Feng for Financial Times. “Under Xi Jinping, the Communist party has made the revival of Marxist-Leninist teachings in education a priority. Most of the top universities in China have joint programmes or study centres set up in collaboration with western universities, including Stanford, NYU, Duke and Cornell in the US, and Nottingham and Liverpool universities in the UK.” Organizers of joint programs specified academic freedoms and protocols for managing disagreements. Yale University and China’s Fudan University partnered from 2009 to 2014 in launching the Chinese language edition of YaleGlobal Online. – YaleGlobal