China is stepping up pressure on educational institutions, including many that run joint programmes with leading western universities, as President Xi Jinping’s ideologically infused anti-corruption campaign takes aim at the country’s intellectual establishment.
Teams of agents from the Communist party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection arrived on the campuses of China’s 29 top universities in the middle of March and will remain there to carry out inspections until the start of May. University presidents and senior administration staff have been told to remain on campus and cancel all travel plans, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Apart from evidence of corruption in academia, the CCDI teams will be looking for examples of breaches of “political discipline”, including ideological problems and infiltration of “western values” such as democracy and freedom of speech.