Beijing: Armed with interactive online courses, generous funding and new dedicated research institutes, China’s universities are on the frontlines of an effort to promote the thinking of President Xi Jinping to China and the world.
Since October, many universities across China have placed “Xi Thought” at the core of their curricula the first time since the era of Mao Zedong that a Chinese leader has been accorded similar academic stature.
Mandatory ideology classes have been updated by the universities in response to instruction from the leadership that Xi’s ideas must enter the textbooks, classrooms and minds of students.
For Hu Angang, an economics professor at the Tsinghua University, the emergence of a leader like China has been a long time coming.
Hu has for decades argued that China’s unique political system will eventually guide the country to become a superpower on par with the US. Now he is among thinkers studying what is known as “Xi Jinping Thought for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.
“Xi’s proposals are all beneficial for the world, they are incomparable,” Hu said in his office on the Tsinghua campus in northwest Beijing. “China has entered a new era.”
