Chinese student who could ‘never love my country’ expelled after two weeks for being unpatriotic

A Chinese student has been expelled for posting comments on social media deemed “unpatriotic” by his university’s Communist Party-run propaganda department in the latest of a series of similar crackdowns in the education sector.

Wang Dong, 18, enrolled on an undergraduate programme with the civil engineering department at Hunan City University on September 9. Just 10 days later he became the subject of an investigation after people complained about his “insulting” social media posts, the Party Committee Propaganda Department said in a statement released on Saturday.

In one comment on his personal account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, Wang wrote that, “loving my country is impossible, I will never love my country”, the statement said.

In other posts he made “extremely erroneous remarks” that were insulting to the country and had an “extremely bad influence”, it said.

As a result of his comments, the university, in Yiyang, central China’s Hunan province, decided to disqualify him, it said.

News of Wang’s expulsion sparked a debate on China’s social media platforms, with the department’s own announcement on Weibo attracting more than 19,000 comments. About half supported the school’s decision and half opposed it.