Beijing Is Pouring Resources into Its UN Human Rights Review—All to Prevent Any Real Review from Taking Place

When Xi Jinping took power just over a decade ago, China was already an authoritarian, one-party state, but since then he has tightened control so severely that persecution of dissidents and government monitoring of virtually all areas of life have become common.  Xi’s assault on human rights inside and outside China, including arbitrarily detaining more than a million Uyghurs and issuing bounties for Hong Kong dissidents who have fled abroad, is now so pervasive that some veteran observers liken Xi’s rule to Mao Zedong’s extensive political control.

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What Will Newly Increased Party Control Mean for China’s Universities?

In January, Radio Free Asia reported that the Chinese Communist Party is “taking a direct role in the running of universities across the country” by merging the presidents’ offices with their Party committees.

Ideological controls on universities have been tightening for more than a decade. In 2013, a leaked Party directive, Document 9, warned against threats to the Party’s rule from “mistaken views and ideas . . . public lectures, seminars, university classrooms, class discussion forums,” and in the media and on the Internet. Last year, the Party’s General Office renewed the warning with a notice ordering legal theorists and educators to “firmly oppose and resist erroneous Western views of ‘constitutional government,’ ‘separation of three powers,’ and ‘independence of the judiciary.’”

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