Chinese public sector managers in education and media must adhere to new rules of party loyalty and “socialist statesmanship” to keep their jobs, the latest move to limit dissent in a sensitive leadership transition year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has moved aggressively to consolidate his power since taking office four years ago and will further stamp his authority on the Chinese Communist Party at a once every five years congress later in the year, when important officials will retire and new ones will take their posts.
Xi has already moved to deepen the party’s tight control over areas like state media and to prevent too much debate about policy, especially as he pushes painful reforms, such as cutting 300,000 people from the military.
New party rules, carried by state media late on Monday, reinforce the loyalty requirement.
“Due to the special ideological requirements of their work, the most important condition for leaders in newspapers, magazines, radios and TV stations is that they have strong political faith and adhere to the spirit of party doctrines,” the new rules state.
University leaders must be “socialist statesmen” who persevere in building their schools toward socialism, while primary, middle and high-school teachers must make party loyalty a part of their work, according to the documents published by the organization and publicity departments of the party’s Central Committee and three other government ministries.
Xi has called for party allegiance of universities, warning against the spread of “western values,” and has asked that media continue to guide public opinion in accordance with the party line.
The new regulations apply to the hiring and firing of administrative managerial personnel in these institutions.
Staff in relevant institutions will be given contracts and tenures with term limits, allowing their performance to regularly come up for review, and helping to shrink the number of people given an “iron rice bowl” of cradle-to-grave work and social care.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion