Education minister warns against 'wrong Western values'

A Chinese newspaper has published an article by the country's education minister in which he warns of textbooks with "wrong Western values" and claims college students and teachers are targets of infiltration by "hostile forces."

Yuan Guiren's article was carried by Monday's edition of China Education Daily, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Education, and comes after Yuan told college officials last week to "never let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes" and asked them to have more oversight of textbooks and materials directly taken from Western countries.

Ideological and publicity work in universities concerns cultivating future generations to help develop socialism with Chinese characteristics and consolidating the guiding role of Marxism in ideology, the article said.

The article, which was earlier published in Seeking Truth, a magazine run by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, highlighted a guideline issued by central authorities in mid-January.

In his article on Monday, Yuan warned that in universities -- the "forward position" of ideological work -- "some symptoms of trends and tendencies should be paid high attention to," without elaborating on the nature of these trends.

"It is more difficult for universities to guide teachers and students with socialist core values in an increasingly complicated domestic and international environment," he wrote.

The minister urged education officials to better explain China's political theories, especially those of President Xi Jinping, and "make those ideologies and theories enter students' ears, brains and hearts."

On the other hand, he accused some countries of feeding their own propaganda into China's education system. "In recent years, some countries have viewed China's rise as a challenge to their institutional patterns and political values, so they have intensified infiltrating and dividing China with more covert means, making ideological and publicity work in universities more difficult," Yuan wrote.

He warned against ideological risks in education in China's period of opening to the outside world, while stressing the need to learn from the achievements of other cultures.

Textbooks should show the mainstream ideology of the country, while those disseminating "wrong Western values" should be prevented from entering China's universities and colleges; instead, a range of textbooks guided by Marxism should be built so as to support mainstream ideology, the minister added.