Students at elite Shanghai university protest the removal of "freedom of thought" from the school charter

Fudan University, one of China's elite centers of higher learning, has had its charter altered to remove "freedom of thought" from its values. In its place, the charter now promotes "arming the minds of teachers and students with Xi Jinping's new era of socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics." In response, students have launched a protest in the form of performances of the school song, which touts "academic independence and freedom of thought."

The change comes along with a requirement to promote "core socialist values" and to ensure the campus is "harmonious" (a Chinese bureaucratic euphemism for purging anti-government sentiment).

Similar charter changes have taken place in other Chinese universities including Nanjing University and Shaanxi Normal University.

The Xi regime's emphasis on Marxist orthodoxy in China's universities has produced some unexpected outcomes: in 2018, Marxist students joined wildcat workers' strikes in solidarity with factory workers against the bourgeois ownership class. Even after student leaders were kidnapped by security forces the students continued their protests, leading to the forced closure of Peking University's Marxist Society.

Fudan's charter change was announced by the Ministry of Education on its website late Tuesday and criticism quickly trended on social media before China's ever-vigilant online censors acted to delete posts and block discussion.

Chinese students defiant as university charter cuts 'freedom of thought' [AFP]

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