Xi calls for more thought control on China’s campuses
President uses high-level meeting on tertiary education to demand that professors and students be made to toe party line
President Xi Jinping has called for allegiance to the Communist Party from colleges and universities, the latest effort by Beijing to tighten ideological control over education.
Universities and colleges would be the “stronghold of the party’s leadership”, Xi told the country’s top cadres on Thursday, urging increased ideological guidance for post-secondary students.
Tertiary educational institutes were responsible for educating the next generation of communist leaders, and they should “firmly uphold the correct political direction”, Xi said at the meeting held in Beijing, which was attended by dozens of senior officials from various central government departments.
Xi’s remarks are part of an ongoing ideological campaign in academia. A year ago, then minister of education Yuan Guiren declared Western values “not suitable for class”, causing an outcry at home and concern overseas.
The two-day meeting on ideological and political work at the mainland’s universities and colleges, which concluded yesterday, was attended by academic officials as well as by Xi and three other members of the party’s innermost Politburo Standing Committee.