New | Peking University students win bittersweet victory against ‘elitist’ academy

Student campaigners have reacted with mixed feelings after the success of a rare public protest against a proposed “elite” training school at China’s most prestigious university. 

Students and faculty at Peking University, often dubbed China’s equivalent of Harvard, have campaigned for weeks online and in meetings to stop the establishment of the academy on their campus, which they felt would relegate them to "second-class" status.  

The university planned to dedicate the Jingyuan Park on the university campus and six historic buildings surrounding it to an elite training institute, the Yenching Academy, in an attempt to replicate the Rhodes scholarship programme. 

Last week, Peking University gave in to one of the students’ key demands, declaring it would not use the six buildings as a dormitory for future Yenching Academy fellows, most of whom would be foreigners. 

The plan, which would have offered housing in historic surroundings to a chosen few, was much reviled by many students at the university, as most of them stay in crowded dormitories. Jingyuan Park is also the only open green space on campus.