MCLC Resource Center

Source: RFA (3/29/19)
University in China’s Chongqing Demotes Professor Over Comments Made in Class

Tang Yun, a deputy professor at the Chongqing Normal University, in undated photo. Photo courtesy of an RFA listener.

A university in the southwestern city of Chongqing has barred another professor from the classroom as the ruling Chinese Communist Party wages ideological warfare on the country’s campuses.

Tang Yun, a 56-year-old deputy professor at the Chongqing Normal University, was stripped of his rank and teaching credentials after he made “comments injurious to the country’s reputation,” an official directive issued by the school said.

Tang, who penned the university’s anthem, was also accused of being “abad influence” on staff and students at the school. Continue reading →

Source: China Heritage (3/27/19)
J’accuse, Tsinghua University!

On 21 March, the same day on which President Bacow of Harvard delivered a powerful lecture at Peking University in which he extolled the virtues of academic inquiry, independence of thought and the pursuit of excellence, ‘next door’ on the campus of Tsinghua University, Professor Xu Zhangrun 許章潤, a noted scholar of law with an international reputation, was formally notified that henceforth he was banned from all teaching activities. Xu was also told that, on Monday 25 March, the university would launch formal disciplinary action against him for his recent writings, some of which have been translated and published by China Heritage (for a list of these, see below). Xu was to be taken task for exemplifying the very qualities that President Bacow advocated when addressing his audience at Peking University.

On hearing of Xu’s suspension, the celebrated independent writer Zhang Yihe (章詒和, 1942-) published a short note in which she expressed outrage and demanded answers from Tsinghua University. In her comments Zhang listed eight major essays that Xu Zhangrun had published in recent years, unique in that they publicly question the country’s rulers and the political direction of the nation. Meanwhile, Geng Xiaonan 耿瀟男, a film critic and publisher, declared in an online post that Xu’s essays were:

直擊七寸, 劍指廟堂。
Blows directed at their Achille’s Heel;
A sword pointed at their Sacred Heart. Continue reading →

Source: China Media Project (2/24/19)
CHINA’S ABOUT-FACE ON EDUCATION
by Elaine Wang

It’s been reported on Twitter that the current Xinjiang party boss Chen Quanguo, who directly oversees the massive concentration camps in Xinjiang, is also a PhD thesis plagiarist, one of many among Chinese officials. His PhD thesis shows heavy plagiarism: over 80% of intro, and large parts of text body, appear directly lifted from other’s works.

Because this is a politburo member in charge of the ongoing genocidal crimes in Xinjiang, this is major news.

See this Twitter thread by @AirMovingDevice: https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/1097175443017392128

It includes, in the third message an onwards, direct evidence of Chen’s copying from someone else’s thesis from just four years earlier. Continue reading →

Source: Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia (1/22/19)
A Death Sentence For a Life of Service
By Amy Anderson

Note: This article written by Amy Anderson is based on interviews with Tashpolat Tiyip’s friends, students and relatives. Their identities cannot be revealed due to obvious reasons. 

Sometime after he disappeared in 2017,  Tashpolat Tiyip, the president of Xinjiang University, was sentenced to death in a secret trial.  The Chinese state has provided no justification for this horrifying violation of human rights. Like hundreds of other Uyghur intellectuals, it has simply taken his life away. Drawing on interviews with Tiyip’s students and relatives, this article tells the story of his life and demonstrates the grotesque absurdity of the Chinese totalitarian state. A man who has dedicated his life to furthering the vision of the state and his people appears to have been sentenced to death for this effort.

A Geographer with a Dream

Tashpolat Tiyip, born in 1958, came of age during the infamous Cultural Revolution during his teenage years. Upon his graduation from high school in 1975, he was asked to join the “Down to the Countryside Movement” and worked as a Red October tractor driver in the fields of Nilka County, in Ili Prefecture.  After six months of saving his salary he was able to buy an Uyghur-Chinese dictionary. According to one of his relatives, every evening he would memorize at least 50 new Chinese words, which he would repeat over and over again while he was driving the tractor in the field from dawn to dusk.  His favorite thing to do after work was to sit beside the Ili River. From a young age he dreamed of becoming a geographer and exploring the physical landscape of the Uyghur homeland. He had faith in a better future as he studied Chinese and enjoyed the sunset over the Heavenly Mountains. Continue reading →