China on May 1 began a new policy aiming to instill party loyalty in schoolchildren by installing vice principals tasked with providing legal education in every primary school, the Mainland Affairs Council said a report.
The new regulations correspond with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) instruction that “rule-of-law education begins with children,” the council said in the culture portion of its quarterly report on China issued in April.
The Measures on the Appointment and Management of Vice Principals for Rule of Law in Primary and Secondary Schools were passed in December last year by the Chinese Ministry of Education, and went into effect on May 1.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
However, the system of installing vice principals for “rule of law,” or fazhi (法治), is not new, but has been attempted in certain areas for decades under a similar name: vice principals of the “legal system,” or fazhi (法制).
In 2001, the Chinese Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission recommended setting up these “legal system” vice principals as a way to prevent juvenile delinquency, which two years later was formalized in a set of guidelines on their appointment and management. Government agencies officially changed the title to “rule of law” in 2016.
In 2020, improving the “vice principals for rule of law” system was included in the party’s five-year “Outline for Establishing a Rule-of-Law Society,” while the role was that same year also included in amendments to the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Law.
As of the end of last year, more than 13,000 judges were serving as vice principals for rule of law in more than 15,000 elementary and middle schools across China, the education ministry told a news conference in February.
In addition, nearly 40,000 prosecutors were serving in 77,000 schools, along with more than 300,000 public security police.
To further standardize the system, the ministry in its new measures requires every primary school to have at least one vice principal for rule of law, who must be recommended by courts, procuratorates, security organs or other judicial units.
The Chinese Communist Party has in the past few years been tightening ideological control in schools, emphasizing party leadership and the vice principal for rule of law responsible for promoting “Xi Jinping Thought,” the council said.
The measures stipulate the main duty of vice principals for rule of law as “carrying out legal education,” first by “promoting the study and propagation of Xi Jinping’s thought on the rule of law.”
As a system that combines rule of law with education, the principals are tasked with promoting Xi’s ideology on campus in an attempt to extend party supervision over schoolchildren to ensure they “listen to and follow the party,” the council said.
The Chinese State Council has said it aims to make China an “education superpower” by 2035, but all the outside world sees is further tightening of academic freedoms, it said.
“It remains to be seen whether this kind of forced brainwashing will be accepted by students and parents who have been enjoying economic prosperity and unrestricted consumption for many years,” the council added.
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