A month after Xi Jinping declared that China's universities need stricter 'ideological guidance' and must expand studies of Marxism, Xinhua has declared an all-out ideological war against 'Western values' saying, "Never let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes."
The "Western" values in question are not enumerated, but apparently don't include Marxism. Call us crazy, but Marx doesn't sound like a Chinese name. The "non-Western values" that Xi and Co. promote (but don't explain in any detail) are presumably Asian (but not the democratic states like Japan, Taiwan, etc.) and socialist (but not in the "having unions or workers' rights" sense).
Xinhua quotes Minister of Education Yuan Guiren, saying, "[remarks] that slander the Communist Party of China, smear socialism or violate the country's constitution and laws must never appear or be promoted in college classrooms." Sounds like uni' will be nothing but socialist fun.
There is one foreign group that happens to be quite pleased at Xi's pronouncements, and that's the (still quite active) world of online communists. At Workers.org, a post from several months ago (a previous time when Xi Jinping called for a return to Marxism) was noting but praise for "ensur[ing] the color of red China will never change."
The folks at Workers applaud moves like China's shift away from "Western values" and emphasis on Marxism in universities, saying "reading the Marxist classics and popularizing the idea of remaining loyal to communism is a healthy and ideologically cleansing program."
Well, at least he has fans somewhere.
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