Students do not take ideological courses seriously. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection warns that this lack of enthusiasm cannot be tolerated.
by Kong Yuxuan
President Xi Jinping was described as deeply concerned after reading a report by the all-powerful CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of September 5 on the ideological health of Chinese universities.
However, any Chinese undergraduate student might have told him what the Commission found after inspecting 31 colleges and universities throughout China. Students couldn’t care less for the mandatory courses about Marxism or Xi Jinping Thought. They regard them as a necessary evil, and try not to waste too much time on ideology, focusing instead on courses about medicine, business, or whatever else they are studying that they believe will help them after college in the competitive fight for a job. Nobody would dare skip or criticize the ideological courses. But taking a nap during them was never really forbidden.
The report calls all this “inadequate strengthening of the political construction” noting that “ideological and political education is relatively weak.” Students need to “study and implement Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era,” and they do not do it, or not enough.
The root cause of this problem, the report says, is a heterodox “theory of the special status of the universities,” which adopts bourgeois concepts of academic freedom and believes that the academia is a free zone where the priority of Marxism and Xi Jinping Thought over any other interest or subject of study may not apply.
This cannot be the fault of students only, and we are told that professors and university administrators responsible for this sorry state of affairs have already been identified and reported for appropriate punishment.
Meanwhile, universities will be “rectified” by making sure that in all schools CCP history, Marxism, and Xi Jinping thought are regarded as the main courses, rather than being confined to a marginal position.
After businesses, entertainment, and the Internet, it is now the turn of universities to be “rectified.”