CHINA: Foreign students face 'indoctrination camp'

The recent tensions in Inner Mongolia, between the indigenous ethnic minority [which wants independence] and the authoritarian Chinese state, have highlighted how the Chinese behave towards their students.

This is not the first time that the authoritarian regime has ordered university administrators to restrict the comings and goings of students and professors, and to stop them going out at weekends. Indeed Chinese universities are structured in such a way as to make such restrictions possible. Surveillance is carried out by professors, security personnel and by students themselves, thanks to the members of the Communist Youth League.

In Beijing, too, scene of the recent 'Jasmine' events in Wangfujing, a permanent order was given to close the universities and 'keep order' on campuses/detention centres. Professors were called on to preach about patriotic values, with the support of sayings by Confucius, Mao, Deng, Zhang, Hu and "5,000 years of history" to "bring everyone together". International students are also caught in the net.

The authoritarian regime is afraid of Chinese students, since the events of Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Today's events in Inner Mongolia took place almost exactly on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, where the name 'Liu Si' [4 June**] is only whispered on campus and where fear, the law of silence and nausea reign. The ghosts of the past continue to haunt the corridors and consciences; lies are not enough.

The authoritarian Chinese regime prefers that these whispers are kept under tight control inside universities where other coercive means exist to keep all the 'resistant' students and professors silent. A ruthless regime exists in Chinese universities. They are temples of indoctrination, where freedom of expression is severely restricted, where a system of carrot and stick - or 'gentle' repression - exists; where the most conformist people are the most rewarded and the rebels expelled.

Foreign professors are kept out of the system, controlled in a different way. I have seen two foreign professors, one English and one American, be accompanied on successive days to the airport and put on a plane for having criticised the Communist Party. There is no tolerance, except in some 'shop window' universities, such as Tsinghua and Peking, which is designed to make people believe that the regime wants world-class universities. I say the regime because the Chinese public are the main victims of the system.

Most universities in China are surrounded by fences and walls, often with the exits located in the four corners of the campus which are guarded by at least two people and security agents in civvies. You have to show your ID card on entering and leaving. The exits are rarely left wide open, creating a funnel which students pass through, sometimes in single file. This is even more the case when there are risks of tension in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, Beijing or Shanghai.

This is what I have seen in most of the universities that I have visited in Beijing and what other professors - all of them foreigners, of course - have told me about universities in other towns. I think many Chinese professors who are not pro-regime are ashamed and above all scared to speak out. One day a professor told me: "Don't foreigners who come here know that by their presence they are helping the regime by giving credence to a completely perverse system. It's absurd. It's all smoke and mirrors here." I never saw that professor, whom I met at a buffet during a conference, again.

But the walls are not just around the campus. They are inside it too where people are controlled by a 'velvet glove' system through the Communist Youth League. They are Party stalwarts, ideologically sound and therefore 'correct'. The League is more than a 'Student Union' - these are men and women who take part in leadership-cum-military activities outside campus, far from the view of foreign students. They are the patriotic elite who guide a patriotic education system.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, a former leader of the League, has used it to put a system of thought control inside universities. In this system the campus has become totally regimented, with a tight control kept on students and professors. It extends even into the dormitories, which are presided over by a member of the League/Communist Party.

The Party recruits the best players this way, the most faithful, the most patriotic. This system is very little known outside China. International students are kept one step removed from this system of carrot and stick, their dormitories and classrooms are kept apart...there is no possibility of collusion or getting together.

International students are careful. The feeling of being 'controlled' definitely makes them feel uneasy. The students talk to me about it, knowing I am discreet, or seeing me as a mediator who can bring some solutions. It doesn't take long before they let their true feelings show when we talk:

o We don't have any rights on campus, we pay, never criticise, accept our duff professors, learn the language and leave.
o You learn practically nothing here. We are preached at and indoctrinated. It is nothing to do with the brochure that I read before coming here.
o My double diploma in economics was in reality just two years spent learning Chinese.
o The best professors are reserved for the Chinese students. We are given patriotic Chinese professors who speak English badly, hardly ever respond to questions or reply in an oblique way.
o This system doesn't make any sense.

I could continue. The list of their complaints is as extensive as the lack of effort made by foreign universities to check up on what is happening. They are happy to sign agreements, pocket the money and make out that they are offering their students an exchange programme with responsible partners. I have noticed that international students in several Beijing universities are suffering from a curious psychological phenomenon, a type of depression, call it oppression, a lack of the happiness and confidence which western students experience and which you can also see in Japan.

Once, when I was talking to an African student from a francophone African country, he turned to his Chinese friend who was beside him and said to me: "You see my friend here, he is in fact a member of the Communist Youth League and he reports every criticism of the system people make in the international building to a professor who is in charge of these things. After class, we are given a lecture on the subject of the criticism. It's like a game. He pretends to be my friend, but he is in fact a spy." At this, the 'friend' got up and left. "Everything is like this, no-one has any true Chinese friends. The Communist League is everywhere."

Another time, a Chinese assistant told me, in confidence and whispering: "In fact, the members of the League use the foreign students. They study them. Their professors push them to learn how to control foreigners." Others come to see me, most of them foreign students. I do what I can to help them, but the problem is ideological, political, strategic, racist. You mustn't forget that China is not a free country, even if it is protected by a 'constitution', which in effect allows the regime to expel any rebels who immediately 'disappear'; and education is strictly controlled. Students, particularly Chinese ones, have to conform or they will have problems when they come to finding a job.

International students have not come to China to get a taste of authoritarianism, but to learn, to get to know and understand a country which accounts for 22% of the world's population and has the second biggest GDP in the world, a country which is a massive player on the 21st century global stage. Students who come to China have made a brave, strategic, risky and responsible choice. But they don't want to lose their dignity, to feel abandoned and forced to accept "living in an indoctrination camp", as one foreign student called it.

Foreign university administrations involved with China have turned a deaf ear to what is happening because it is easier to do so, to take the money and deny categorically all the criticism, to internationalise without conscience or ethics.

Don't international students have rights? Does no-one want to take up their cause? Is it easier to say that they are all wrong and to believe the lies of a regime known for its 'soft power' methods? Does the repression in Inner Mongolia not exist? Nor that in Tibet, Xinjiang and Beijing and anywhere else in China? It is in the silence and hidden looks that the freedom and happiness of students is held up to ridicule.

* Francis Ernouf is the pseudonym of an anonymous blogger on higher education in China. His full blog postings can be found on Educpros.fr and this article is translated from the French.
**In the original French text the author inadvertently translated "Liu Si" as 6 June instead of 4 June.

Comment:
I just returned from nearly 4 weeks in China, at 5 major universities, and the China described in this French article--by an author who hides behind a pseudonym--is not the China I know from having lectured at over 18 universities (including one in Inner Mongolia) since 1993.

There is a simple reality-check for any reader. China sends huge numbers of college students(over 100,000 to the U.S.) each year. Outside China, they should be able to confirm or refute this article. Instead you will find they will describe a China that is not monolithc, but in no case the dark picture painted in this essay. In Shanghai, many universities no longer require a class in Maoist thought. Other areas vary, and the proportion who were Young Pioneers and now Youth League will vary, with higher proportions in rural schools. Nearly a dozen other parties can be found at local level, even the Kuomintang, although they do not have the numbers to be significant at the national level.

This essay portrays the "tensions" in Inner Mongolia as a political problem, but UWN reported the actual far less sinister circumstances a month ago.

I too speak to professors and students at the universities I visit, and find the anecdotes in this essay not representative of Chinese university life, climate, or atmosphere. I would urge readers to likewise take advantage of any opportunity to talk with returning Western students who have studied at length in Chinese universities (there are far too few of them).

Meanwhile, I will merely point out that I sign my name; the essayist does not.

John Richard Schrock


1. You try to discredit me because I use a pseudonym and yet pen names are quite frequent: Lu Xun(鲁迅), Mao Dun(茅盾),Qin Mu(秦牧), Ba Jin(巴金), Cao Yu(曹禺) - that's just for China, and in the West it's an old and noble tradition. Surely if Liu Xiaobo had used a pen he would be free today and continuing resisting the Party's fierce grip on uncensored unfiltered information, and the Dalai Lama and Rabiya Kadir would not have to live in exile.

2. You mention the Shanghai elections. Briefly, in my opinion, these are not only a sham but act as bait to lure out potential opponents to the dictatorship of the Party - read the Washington Times article "Independents to challenge Communists in Chinese elections," for a true account of these so-called elections and parties. There are hundreds of such stories.

3. 100,000 students to US, and few to China - are you arguing that this is not fair? But it is actually. Anyway these students are not bargaining chips, nor organisms to be studied in a laboratory. Clearly US students don't nearly have the same opportunities in China so why would they come? If Chinese students want to go to the US, including the sons and daughters of most high ranking officials, it's because the US education system, and European, is far superior, and China's education system is a series of patriotic camps unable to create a single Nobel Prize winner, where rote learning and gaming tests and scores is what they unfortunately really learn. But the Party wants it that way. Certainly don't want them thinking for themselves now, do they?

In China teachers don't encourage debate but conformism. I don't know where you got your information that Marxism in no longer taught - you're wrong, very wrong indeed. Until China can prove its education system truly respects academic freedom and critical thinking, which today it clearly does not, it has no chance of claiming equality with the education system outside of China.
Merely talking itself into creating world class universities will not work as China's former premiere Zhu Rongji argued in 2010 and again recently. So long as they remains patriotic centres of indoctrination doing the Party's bidding and prisons of the soul, criticism will deservedly fall on them like rain.

4. The Party is skilled in the art of manipulation, deception and special treatment reserved for certain key foreign experts. Foreigners tend to be shown only what they want you to see as part of a charm operation. I know these tactics and have actually seen them used against Nobel Prize winners, lots of distinguished foreign experts, all wined and dined and treated with the kind of respect reserved to royalty.

5. My goal is to make sure people know what's going on in China, to make sure the Party keeps its tricks in China and that they are not used in the realm of higher education by attempting to gain credibility through completely absurd programs like Obama's 100 000 sacrificial lamb "cultural exchange" programmes on the basis of false claims and false arguments.

Francis Ernouf