Political Indoctrination in Chinese Colleges

In a system where ministers are incentivized to report only good news, China’s Minister of Education public censure of failures in ideological and political education (思想政治教育; IPE) at Chinese universities came as a surprise (FRI, March 12). A campaign has been underway to intensify IPE since a December 2016 conference on ideological and political work in China’s universities and colleges. At the conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping strongly reaffirmed the supremacy of Marxism and socialism in Chinese institutions of higher learning, and pressed for strengthening of ideological and political work to indoctrinate the country’s 37 million college students (Xinhua, December 9, 2016). Yet the Minister of Education’s criticisms indicate that IPE is not proving successful.

The Status Quo of IPE

Chinese colleges have a long history of radicalism that stirs fear among Party elites. Whether it was the Red Guard movement, the 1989 student demonstrations, or the recent nationalist protests, the college campus, with its proclivity for freethinking, is a place where the Party cannot afford to let go of the reins. Chinese universities are firmly controlled by the state through finances and appointment of administrative leadership. Even outwardly independent private colleges are falling under the control of newly installed Party secretaries with the clear intention of being the “backbone of ideological and political work (China Wenming Online, January 13).”

According to surveys completed by Chinese researchers, the Party enjoys majority support among college students—with one poll showing that 73.3 percent “support” or “strongly support” the Party’s leadership. [1] Although we must be aware that China’s political climate deeply influences how interviewees answer a survey, research has shown that the Party does have a healthy level of support among college students. [2] Nonetheless, student support for IPE, the Party’s signature indoctrination program, is comparatively low.

Mixing Marxism, patriotism, and some traditional Chinese values, IPE aims to rally mass support for the Party, its ideology, and its governance. Taught as a required course, one study shows that 64.4 percent of students are “unsatisfied” with IPE, with another 17.9 percent “very unsatisfied.” [3] Likewise, 50 percent of respondents in another study find IPE “almost pointless,” but forced themselves to attend due to school rules. Plagiarism and cheating are common due to students’ falling enthusiasm. [4] Despite interest in Red Culture (红色文化), a set of state sponsored cultural values based on the Chinese Communist Party’s revolutionary experience—a notable minority (28.3 percent) of students find Red Culture events (a component of IPE) boring. Over half (53.2 percent) said they were forced to attend, and 60.5 percent view these events as irrelevant to real life. [5]

Why is IPE so Unpopular?

Political indoctrination is rarely fun, especially for students living in a relatively open society. While students demand more discussions, debates and field work, IPE teachers can only continue with monotonous lectures because any exercise involving critical analysis will shatter the perfect image of Marxism. [6] Thus, while Chinese college students loathe IPE for being a “single-voice class” (一言堂) where the teacher dominates the conversation, changes are less likely to come as it could possibly destroy IPE in its entirety. [7]

IPE is fighting an uphill battle in three areas. The increasing Internet usage by Chinese college students is corroding the hold of official ideology. For example, the officially championed myth of the Chinese Communist Party as the mainstay in expelling Japanese invaders is slowly losing believers, because more and more students are learning the truth from the Internet. [8] Eighty percent of Chinese college students spend more than two hours a day surfing the Web, 92 percent say they use the Internet as a source of information, and 88.9 percent use Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Twitter) and WeChat (Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp)—two apps that allow students some modicum of privacy when discussing current affairs. [9]

The arrival of organized religion to Chinese campuses poses another threat to official ideology. Besides offering mental comfort, organized religious groups serve as a social safety net for students, in comparison to communist political organizations that are fraught with corruption and exclusivism. Recent studies show that interest in religion is gaining strength in Chinese colleges, even in the Communist Youth League. [10] Forty-nine percent of students do not know that Party members must be atheists, and a third (31.4 percent) do not mind campus proselytizing—an act forbidden by the state. [11] While the growing interest in religion has not openly challenged the Party’s dominance of campuses, one trend might spell trouble in the near future. In one survey of Xinjiang colleges, 5.8 percent of respondents believe one can force a religion on others. [12] More alarmingly, 8.6 percent agree with the extreme position that spreading one’s religion using violent means is permissible. [13]

IPE educators face additional difficulties in areas dominated by ethnic and religious minorities, in particular among Tibetans and the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang. Few of these groups played major roles in the events of the 20th century that conditioned the contemporary Chinese psyche. Compared to Mongols and Hui Muslims that allied with Chinese communists in the fight against Japan, Tibetans and Turkic Muslims played next to no role in the in the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937–1945) which forms the core of the CCP’s national narrative. Moreover, Marxism’s anti-religion doctrine makes IPE difficult when teaching Tibetan college students who hold Lamaism in high regard. Most Tibetans live their entire life according to Buddhism precepts and hold deep reverence for their religious leaders. To teach religion as obsolescent is not only deeply offensive to Tibetans, but also counterproductive to IPE in general. [14] The same can be said for Xinjiang, where ethnic Turkic Muslims constitute more than half of the province’s population. Although students would pay lip service to the curriculum just so they can graduate, the doctrinaire system of pedagogy is not truly winning over hearts and minds.

The Role of Political Counselors

Outside of the classroom, Political Counselors (政治辅导员; PCs) take care of a student’s all-around needs while attending college, and are tasked with shaping his/her ideological and political values. As the “backbone of ideological and political education for college students,” PCs are “the organizer, implementer and mentors of college students in everyday ideological and political education and management” (Ministry of Education, July 23, 2006).

Working closely with selected student cadres, the PCs spread the Party’s message when students are outside of the classroom. Although the law stipulates that there should be one PC to every 200 students, in reality, personnel shortage makes the ratio much higher. One to 300 or 400 is not an unusual number. In extreme cases, it has been reported that a PC have to take care of 1,000 students, making the job impossible. [15]

Besides being over-encumbered, 56 percent of PCs are unsatisfied with their salary and benefits. To add to the already tense environment, PCs are governed by a dual command regime, where school and department leadership can sometime issue conflicting orders. [16]

Under these circumstances, it is not a surprise to find that some PCs do not even agree with the Party line themselves. One poll shows that 31.92 percent of PCs do not believe in the Marxist dogma that a communist society is inevitable. Straying from the government narrative, close to half (47.1 percent) of PCs do not believe that the income gap will close in ten years. [17]

The Role of Protection Divisions

If IPE teachers and PCs are the softer side of political indoctrination, then Protection Divisions (保卫处) are the “stick” that police political behavior. Present in every university bureaucracy, the Protection Division have several functions—public safety, fire prevention, registering visitors and temporary workers—and most importantly, political policing. Underneath each Protection Division there is a Political Protection Section (政保科; PPS). While taking on different names at different colleges, the mission of the PPS remain more or less the same—propagate official ideology and counter any attempts by “hostile forces” in influencing students. Although the PPS do not have law enforcement power, a power reserved for the public security police, it does have the power to investigate. [18] Political Protection Informants (政保信息员), selected from the student body, serve as the PPS’s “eyes and ears (耳目)” (Xi’an Shiyou University, June 6, 2014).

Given the secrecy surrounding its work, most PPSs do not publicize their duties, but the PPS of the Harbin Institute of Technology, self-referred to as the Political Protection and State Security Office (政保国安办), openly declares its responsibilities as the following:

1. Responsible for propaganda and education of the national security concept, enemy awareness, and political stability.
2. Responsible for understanding, controlling, tracking, and ideological education of key people that can influence political stability.
3. Responsible for carrying out research and information gathering; grasp the ideological trends among faculty and students in a timely and accurate manner to provide the basis for higher-level leadership decision-making.
4. Cooperate with public security and state security police in detecting and investigating cases endangering state security.
5. Responsible for security of important leaders and foreign dignitaries. Assist relevant agencies in implementing security measures for foreign experts, teachers, exchange students, compatriots from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and visiting foreign staff.
6. Assist relevant agencies to prevent and punish infiltration, incitement, and sabotage of schools by domestic and foreign hostile forces, illegal religious forces, and ethnic separatist forces.
7. Assist relevant agencies in secure management of the campus’s computer network system and identification of sources of harmful information.
8. Assist relevant agencies in confidential work.
9. Conduct political review of school staff in accordance with the requirements of relevant agencies.
10. Assist relevant agencies in managing student associations.
11. Conduct basic business work. Establish and improve the management of various data files.
12. Assist other sections and offices in completing tasks. Complete any other mission assigned by the division director (Harbin Institute of Technology).

In essence, PPS is the monitor of campus security and ideological uniformity, in addition to serving as the workhorse of counterintelligence. While IPE staff focus on pedagogy, it is the PPS’s mission to keep out unofficial people and ideas. This repressive regime is likely to receive greater state investment due to the risks associated with liberalizing IPE.

Conclusion

Among Chinese college students, support for the Party and government remain strong—at least on paper. However, most students have shown their dissatisfaction with IPE and their inability to intake additional political coursework void of liberal teaching methods. In the future, the state will likely strengthen IPE in the following ways. Firstly, the state will try to assert greater control of the cyber sphere by clamping down on alternative sources of information popular among students—also by intensifying propaganda and counterpropaganda on Weibo and WeChat. Secondly, more PCs will be trained to alleviate the current personnel shortage. Thirdly, greater attention will be diverted to indoctrination in ethnic areas, especially to the Tibetan and Turkic Muslims most susceptible to what the state calls the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism. Finally, there will be a renewed pushback against the spread of religion in colleges, a trend, if unchecked, will present significant challenges in winning over China’s brightest young minds.

Zi Yang is an independent researcher and consultant on China affairs. His research centers on Chinese internal security issues. He holds a M.A. from Georgetown University and a B.A. from George Mason University. Follow him on Twitter @MrZiYang. 

Notes

1. Jianbo Dai, “‘90后’大学生政治认同实证研究——基于湖北七所高校的调查分析 [An Empirical Study of Political Identity of College Students Born after 1990—a Study Based on Surveys of Seven Hubei Universities],” Higher Education Exploration, no. 7 (July 2016), p. 105.
2. Yingna Huang, “大学生践行社会主义核心价值观的现状调查——基于沈阳高校的证据 [The Current Situation of University Students’ Socialist Core Values],” Modern Education Management, no. 11 (November 2016), p. 99.
3. Xingyu Chen, “高校思想政治理论课实践教学调查研究——以云南省7所高校为例 [Investigation on Practical Teaching of the Ideological and Political Theory Course in Colleges and Universities: Taking Seven Colleges and Universities in Yunnan Province as Examples],” Journal of Dali University, no. 5 (May 2015), p. 89.
4. Weixia Zhang et al., “地方院校大学生时政参与现状反思研究——以S高校为例 [Reflections on College Students’ Political Participation in Local Universities:Taking S University as an Example],” Meitan Higher Education, no. 3 (May 2016), p. 71; Xingyu Chen, p. 91.
5. Shengqi Luo, Chao Wang, and Qingzhi Zheng, “‘大学生对高校红色文化教育认同与要求’的调查及启示 [A Survey of ‘Student Recognition and Demand of Red Culture Education in Universities’ and Its Enlightenment],” Shanghai Journal of Education Evaluation, no. 5 (October 2016), p. 55; Ibid, p. 57.
6. Haoye Wang and Wu’er Yan, “95后大学生对思想政治教育的认识探析——以北京交通大学为例 [An Analysis of Post-1995 Undergraduates’ Understanding of Ideological and Political Education—using Beijing Jiaotong University as an Example],” Journal of Chinese Youth Social Science, no. 4 (July 2016), p. 104.
7. Tingjian Lang and Bingzhuo Bai, “高校思想政治理论课的困境及对策——基于一线从教人员的观点 [Dilemma and Countermeasures of Ideological and Political Course in Colleges and Universities——Based on the Viewpoints of Teaching Faculty],” Social Sciences Journal of Universities in Shanxi, no. 6 (June 2016), pp. 44–45.
8. Qingxin Shi and Anzhou Fu, “‘中国共产党抗战中流砥柱作用’的认同及其影响因素——基于武汉市四所高校的问卷调查 [Identity and Its Influencing Factors of the Idea ‘The Chinese Communist Party as the Mainstay in the War of Resistance against Japan’— Based on the Questionnaire Survey of Four Universities in Wuhan],” Theory and Reform, no. 3 (May 2016), p. 83.
9. Na Chen, “新媒体环境下高校思想政治理论课教师媒介素养面临的挑战和应对 [Challenges to Teachers of Ideological and Political Course in Colleges on Their Media Literacy in the Circumstances of New Media],” Journal of Urumqi Vocational University, no. 3 (September 2016), p. 15; Qing Min, “高校大学生网络政治参与现状与对策研究——基于鄂西北四所高校为例实证分析 [Current Situation of College Students’ Online Political Participation and the Countermeasures: An Empirical Research in Four Northwest Universities of Hubei Province],” Journal of Jilin Institute of Chemical Technology, no. 4 (April 2016), p. 46.
10. Jianhui Liang, “高校宗教热与思想政治教育现状的对比与分析——基于对全国1200名大学生的实证调查 [Comparative Analysis on the Current Situation of Religious Fever and Ideological and Political Education in Colleges and Universities— Based on an Empirical Investigation of 1200 National College Students],” Journal of Guangzhou Institute of Socialism, no. 3 (July 2016), p. 104.
11. Hongmei Wang and Lin Gui, pp. 55–56.
12. Fayang Chen, “新疆高校大学生宗教渗透现状调查结果分析 [An Analysis of the Survey of Religious Penetration of College Students in Xinjiang],” Inheritance & Innovation, no. 10 (October 2015), p. 119.
13. Ibid, p. 120.
14. Shuguang Liu, “藏区高校思想政治理论课教学中的困境与宗教资源的有效利用探析——以甘肃民族师范学院为例 [Difficulties in the Teaching of the Ideological and Political Theory Course and the Effective Use of Religious Resources in Tibetan Universities—Taking Gansu Normal University for Nationalities as an Example],” Course Education Research, no. 23 (August 2016), p. 64; Longhua Wang, “浅谈高校政治辅导员选用学生干部的方法 [On Political Counselor’s Methods of Choosing Student Cadres in Colleges and Universities],” Journal of Harbin Vocational & Technical College, no. 2 (March 2013), p. 76; Hongxia Zhou, Xuelong Yang, and Kui Liu, “高校辅导员心理健康状况及对策分析——基于浙江省2231名辅导员的实证调查 [Analysis of Status Quo of and Solutions to Mental Health of College and University Counselors: Empirical Investigation into 2231 Counselors in Zhejiang Province],” Journal of Zhejiang Normal University (Social Sciences), no. 6 (November 2015), p. 92.
15. Yaya Li and Guodong Zhang, “人本视域下高校辅导员队伍建设探析——基于甘肃省897名辅导员的调查 [Construction of College Advisors Team with Humanistic Vision—Based on the Investigation of 897 Counselors in Gansu Province],” Journal of College Advisor, no. 5 (October 2016), p. 38; Haijun Zhao and Junping Fan, “高校政治辅导员思想政治工作的心态现状 [The Mental State of Ideological Political Work of Political Instructors in Colleges and Universities],” Heilongjiang Science and Technology Information, no. 36 (December 2012), p. 231.
16. Yaya Li and Guodong Zhang, p. 36; Nan Zhao et al., “马克思主义信仰困境与境界超越——对20所高校辅导员的实证研究 [The Plight of Marxist Beliefs and beyond Based on a Survey of College Counselors from 20 Universities],” Journal of Chongqing University (Social Science Edition), no. 2 (March 2016), p. 197.
17. Ibid, p. 195.
18. Tianling Wang and Haobin Chi, “新形势下高校保卫工作的创新 [The Innovation of College Security Work in the New Situation],” Ability and Wisdom, no. 27 (September 2016), p. 164.