Chinese teacher suspended for ‘belittling’ great inventions in online chat
- Associate professor caused ‘vicious social impact’ in comments to student in social media chat room
- Ethics committee suspends him from teaching for two years
An associate professor has been suspended by his university in southwestern China for causing “vicious social impact” by belittling the four great ancient Chinese inventions of papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass.
Zheng Wenfeng was suspended from teaching for 24 months by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, Sichuan province, for his comments in June to a student in an online group discussion on Chinese social media platform WeChat.
Zheng told the student, who wanted to choose the four great inventions as a thesis topic on innovation, that “ancient China did not have any substantial innovations” and that the four great inventions were “not advanced in the world and did not generate any productivity or cooperation in reality”.
The four inventions are extolled in China as important contributions to the development of world civilisation.
The student’s boyfriend put a screenshot of the conversation on Zhihu.com, a Quora-style knowledge-sharing website, where it generated wide attention.
In July, the university issued a statement saying that Zheng had expressed mistaken opinions in the online chat room which had “caused vicious social impact”. The university went on to say that its teachers’ ethics committee had determined Zheng had violated ethics regulations and he would be suspended from teaching, recruitment of master’s degree candidates, and promotion for the next 24 months.