After the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the authorities have been strongly promoting “Xi Jinping Thought” inside China, and are now exporting it to the U.S. On October 18, the website of Foreign Policy magazine published an article that Australian scholar Kevin Carrico wrote. “I was so excited to learn this August of a new course offered on the edX website, a U.S.-based learning platform: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era—the official full name of Xi Jinping Thought. The instructor was none other than the Tsinghua University professor Hu Angang, known for his close links to senior government leaders and his claims that China has already overtaken the United States as the primary global superpower.”
edX is an online course provider that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University created.
Carrico said that, after paying a $49 fee, and providing a verified certificate with instructor professor Hu’s signature, he “was able to receive a final score of 100 across all the multiple choice quizzes.”
“The course’s promotional materials promised that learners would obtain ‘[s]ystematic and full knowledge of the {Chinese Communist Party’s} people-centered core concept,’ as well as a ‘deeper understanding of the socialist road with Chinese characteristics.’” Carrico explained about the contents of the course, “It is fair to say that China is a society different from Western society. Mainly, it has established a people’s society.” “Hu reminded us that the Chinese republic is the people’s republic, the national bank is the people’s bank, the police are the people’s police, and the army is the people’s army. But wait, there’s more. Hu proudly reported that Xi used the term ‘people’ 203 times in his report to the 19th Party Congress in 2017—more than any other term.”
Hu once said in his published research that China’s comprehensive national strength has completely surpassed the United States and it is ranked first in the world. It caused academic controversy after the Sino-US trade war.
A group of Tsinghua alumni signed a letter to the president of Tsinghua University in August. It criticized Hu Angang’s theory {about China’s surpassing the U.S.} as “misleading the national policy, as well as the general public, setting off alarm bells among other countries. It asked the university to fire him.
Source: Central News Agency, October 20, 2018
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201810200204.aspx