Chinese universities rush to study Xi
BEIJING — A day after thousands of Communist Party delegates voted to have President Xi Jinping’s thoughts included in the official party dogma, one of the country’s elite universities immediately opened a research center dedicated to his ideology.
Within the next few days around 40 universities followed suit, scrambling to set up their own centers for “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era.”
It’s the latest example of the narrowing space for independent thought in China, and the ever tighter ideological controls being imposed under Xi’s rule, foreign and domestic experts said.
It is also at odds with China’s ambitions to be a global power in academia as the space for constructive debate narrows.
“This strikes me as a Great Leap Backwards for Chinese academia,” said Edward Vickers, an expert in Chinese education at Japan’s Kyushu University.
In an important speech last December, Xi declared that universities should be strongholds of the party, while teachers should be disseminators of “advanced ideology” and “staunch supporters” of Communist Party rule.
Six months later, the party’s anti-corruption watchdog concluded an inspection of the nation’s elite universities by accusing 14 of them of ideological weakness, for not making enough effort to teach and defend Communist Party rule.
It appears the higher education sector has learned its lesson.
The first to announce a research center dedicated to Xi Jinping Thought was Renmin University of China in Beijing, one of the nation’s most respected higher education institutions with links to more than 200 other universities around the globe.
It opened the center Oct. 25, just one day after thousands of Communist Party delegates unanimously voted to absorb the cumbersome phrase into their constitution, alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.
“From the aspect of the development of our country, the establishment of the research center is of great historical significance,” Liu Wei, president of the university and director of the new center told Chinese media.
“It is an important given to school by our times.”
While the party’s ideology does merit serious study, say critics, the point of these centers is to give the party some academic gloss and enhance its legitimacy.
The nation’s top academics may not take them seriously: Peking University already has a center dedicated to Deng Xiaoping Theory, and it is arguably peripheral to the main academic work of the university.
Nevertheless, the establishment of so many centers in such a short space of time responsibility the symbolizes a significant shift in the political climate in which academics and students operate.
“While Xi is genuinely popular with many Chinese, attempts to reimpose this sort of crude ideological control in universities are not likely to lead to harmonious relations between academia and the party leadership,” Vickers said.
“Many professors — especially in social science and humanities disciplines — find this more stringent ideological atmosphere highly demoralizing, though it is unlikely to provoke outright resistance.”