A year after Michael Arthur wel- comed Chinese president Xi Jinping to the Insitute of Education for a festival of backslapping sycophancy (see CG 50), UCL have announced a joint MBA programme with Peking University.
This represents the latest of a raft of deals UCL has made with dubious nations. Management have received lots of criticism in the past for being too close to human rights abusing re- gimes such as Kazakhstan and Qatar. The latest news will not cheer cam- paigneres, as China has been accused of abuses against human rights and free-speech repeatedly over the years.
But Arthur’s usual protestation that UCL plays the Western liberal civiliser falls especially flat here. At the beginning of December this year, Xi Jinping restated his inten- sions to increase ideological control over universities.
“Higher education,” Xi de- clared, “must adhere to correct po- litical orientation”, and univerisities must become “strongholds that ad- here to party leadership”. Whilst Peking University used to be one of the sole bastions of free- speech, notably playing a key rule in the Tiananmen Square protests, it seems to have subsequently ceded to the government’s ideological con- trols.
In an article published in an influ- ential communist journal, written by the university’s party committee, the university signalled its desire to “fight against” anti-communist criticism.
This follows the effective firing of then professor Xia Yeliang, 53, who had dared to write a few blog posts extolling the need for democracy in China and calling for reforming the rule of law.
One would imagine that London’s so-called Global University would baulk at getting into bed with such an institution, but for mangement, business seems to trump any global values one might hold.
In any case, with foreign students often paying in excess of £20,000 a year in fees, cash-strapped manage- ment will be licking their lips at the projected Chinese influx.