海角大神

Beijing鈥檚 leaders continue to build defenses against the spread of Western ideas聽in ways that partly echo China鈥檚 self-imposed isolation of the 1960s, while also pushing a new mix of traditional Chinese and communist ideas.聽

Education Minister聽Yuan Guiren announced Thursday new restrictions on聽college textbooks that promote Western values, and said college students should not participate in critical debates on China鈥檚 leaders, politics, or history. The move is part of a broader crackdown on access to Western culture in China, including access to the the Internet.聽

鈥淣ever let textbooks promoting Western values enter into our classes,鈥� Mr. Yuan said at a forum in Beijing, according to the Financial Times. 鈥淎ny views that attack or defame the leadership of the party or smear socialism must never be allowed to appear in our universities.鈥�

College students must receive "positive guidance through intensified work," and professors must "stand firm and hold the 'political, legal and moral bottom line,'" according to China's state-run news agency, Xinhua. The forum was attended by senior officials from many of China's elite universities.聽

Meanwhile,聽locals and foreigners in China are finding it harder to log onto virtual private networks, or VPNs, a common workaround to evade China's online censorship. This follows recent blocks on Google's email service, The New York Times reports, adding that聽what had been a聽kind of wink and nod acceptance of VPN鈥檚 鈥� widely useful for business people, scientists, students, and foreigners to connect with the world 鈥� has been shut down with 鈥渦nprecedented sophistication.鈥�

The move is part of a two-year cultural and ideological offensive by President Xi Jinping to restrict the kind of free thought and behavior that underpins much of the civil society and democracy concept in the West 鈥� and that Beijing fears could undermine the authority of the Communist Party.聽Yuan, the education minister, said Thursday that the speeches and writings of Mr. Xi would be part of universities' curricula.聽

The problem facing such a campaign, say China watchers, is that so-called Western ideas and technology, sometimes called "universal," are already embedded into China, in contrast to the isolationist 1960s when many Chinese leaders came of age. Today, Chinese parents, students, and real estate speculators are busy moving abroad, going to school, buying investment houses, doing business, and becoming accomplished professionals.

Agence France Presse reports聽that some Chinese bloggers are likening Yuan鈥檚 proclamations on restricting content and speech in college as 鈥渂rainwashing鈥� akin to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when Mao Zedong banned all foreign ideas and then pitted society against itself.

鈥淚 guess these commands are more strict than those during the Cultural Revolution,鈥� said a blogger on Weibo, a closely-monitored social media service in China.聽

Alternative guidepost and corruption probes

Since taking over in 2012, Xi has consolidated his power through an anti-corruption campaign that has seen the arrest of both Xi鈥檚 enemies and many unsavory officials whom party stalwarts accuse of taking a free ride off of China鈥檚 new wealth.聽

While Marx's lure has faded, even within the ruling party,聽Xi鈥檚 compatriots have turned to the ancient figure of Confucius as an alternative guidepost for the people, with limited success.聽

One Western-based academic quoted Mao in a response to the new university strictures:聽

Apart from the anti-Western values campaign, which has hit against artists, writers, intellectuals, 海角大神s, as well as civil society groups right down to local libraries where gatherings might take place,聽China鈥檚 current moves against Internet access to the outside world could have the greatest impact.

Students and businesspeople alike have come to rely on VPNs to sidestep China's firewall and connect with all manner of websites, from Facebook and scholarly journals to the latest fine-grained economic news.聽

In a place like China, which greatly values both secrecy and commerce, it's unclear how a decision to restrict VPNs has been weighed. However, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, James Zimmerman, told the Times that: