Leading universities strip freedom of thought from their charters

Changes to the charters of three prestigious Chinese universities — Fudan in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an — “that place absolute adherence to Communist Party rule over academic independence have provoked heated online debate and prompted some prominent academics to raise concerns amid a backdrop of tightening ideological control on China’s campuses,” reports the Wall Street Journal (paywall, or the Guardian, Washington Post).

References to academic independence and freedom of thought were stripped out of the charter of Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University, long-considered one of the country’s most liberal academic institutions. Substituted were references to “serving the governance of the Communist Party” and “dedication to patriotism,” according to a notice posted on the website of China’s Ministry of Education.

Qū Wèiguó 曲卫国, a professor at Fudan University’s foreign-languages school, wrote on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service that he was “very shocked” to learn of the amendments, which he said were made without staff consultation and likely contravened university and education ministry regulations. The post was deleted several hours later. [Qu’s Weibo account is here, in Chinese.]

Other social media protests about the amendments were also censored. But there was a rare “singing flash mob demonstration” by students at Fudan University, according to the South China Morning Post:

About a dozen students started singing the first verse of the Fudan University school song — which celebrates the pursuit of academic independence and free thinking without political and ideological influence — accompanied by a harmonica as campus security and teaching staff looked on.

The flash mob lasted just under 20 minutes on the first and second floors of the Danyuan cafeteria in Guanghua Building on campu… A video clip of the flash mob…went viral on Chinese social media. The clip has since been censored [but is still on Twitter].  

What is the context

Ever since the 2013 leak of the Communist Party’s Document Number Nine — which warned against the spread of and especially the teaching of “dangerous” Western values such as media freedom and separation of powers — the writing has been on the wall. Here is a sad timeline — sad for what it represents, but sad also that in the interest of brevity, I’ve had to cull several hundred links into the short list below:

April 2015 

China’s ideological push / Insider Higher Ed

Experts consider implications of government officials’ statements about the need for universities to reject Western values.

December 2016

China’s Xi calls for universities’ allegiance to the Communist Party / Reuters

China’s President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 has called for allegiance to the ruling Communist Party from the country’s colleges and universities, the latest effort by Beijing to tighten its hold on education.

August 2017

Chinese universities tighten ideological control of teaching staff / SCMP

Seven top colleges set up departments to oversee the political thinking of teachers after government inspectors criticise institutions’ ideological ‘weakness.’

October 2018

The death of Peking University / The China Project

Security apparatchik to lead Peking University… No doubt his orders are clear: Make sure nothing remotely like 1919 or 1966 or 1989 happens at PKU in 2019. We can expect further purges of the faculty, and clampdowns on all kinds of student activities.

March 2019

A Chinese law professor criticized Xi. Now he’s been suspended. / NYT (porous paywall)

One of China’s most prestigious universities has suspended a law professor and placed him under investigation after he published a series of essays that warned of deepening repression under President Xi Jinping, he said on Tuesday.

Professor Xǔ Zhāngrùn 许章润, of Tsinghua University in Beijing, shot to prominence last year when he published a passionate essay in July that was a rare rebuke of Mr. Xi’s rule.

August 2019

College professor suspended for diminishing China’s ‘Four Great Inventions’ / The China Project

A university professor in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, has been stripped of teaching duties for two years after students filed a complaint about remarks he made regarding the “four great inventions of ancient China.”