On August 30, 2021, China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a directive requiring literary and artistic workers to study a series of articles by the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping.

The directive was issued to address the current violations of laws, regulations, and moral failures in the entertainment business, to further strengthen the control of education and to cultivate and promote the core values ​​of socialism.

The first item in the directive is to “strengthen study and education.” Specifically, it refers to studying Xi Jinping’s series of important expositions on literary and artistic work in depth. The directive calls for a deep understanding that the cause of entertainment is an “important cause for the party and the people” and that the entertainment front is an “important front of the party and the people.”

On August 29, 2021, the CCP media, China Youth Daily, posted a commentary entitled “Everyone Can Feel  that a Profound Change Is Underway!” More than 30 state media at the central, provincial and municipal levels in China have since prominently re-posted the commentary.

The commentary calls China’s recent crackdown measures “profound reforms” or “profound revolutions.” From censoring entertainment stars to suspending Ant’s Initial Public Offering, to Alibaba’s fine of 18.2 billion yuan, to the investigation of Didi and to the “common prosperity” policy, all measures show that a profound reform or revolution is taking place in the economic, financial, cultural, and even political arena. A profound “revolution” or “revolution” is returning capital to the people, to the CCP’s original goal, and to socialism. Those who attempt to block this reform will be “abandoned.”

The commentary continues that this “profound reform” is to counter the “barbaric and ferocious attack” of the United States against China. The commentary implies that China’s capitalists are the “fifth column” of the United States in waging a color revolution in China. “The United States is imposing increasingly severe military threats, economic and technological blockades, financial strikes, political and diplomatic containment and the suppression of China.” “The United States is more aggressively waging a color revolution through the fifth column within China. If this time, we still have to rely on those big capitalists as the main force of anti-imperialism and anti-hegemony,” China will not need enemies to fight. “It will fall first by itself,” just like the Soviet Union back then. That’s why China is reforming the “capital circle” and the “entertainment circle.”

Sources:

1.) China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, August 30, 2021
https://www.mct.gov.cn/whzx/whyw/202108/t20210830_927427.htm

2.) People’s Daily, August 29, 2021
http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0829/c1001-32211523.html

3.) Radio France Internationale, August 31, 2021
https://tinyurl.com/6p54dc87

The owners of private schools in China have been forced to turn over their facilities to the state.

On August 25, 2021, the Ministry of Education of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded to questions from the media regarding the “Notice on Regulating the Establishment of Public Schools or Participation in the Establishment of Private Compulsory Education Schools.” The Ministry of Education stated that schools must cooperate with the CCP and carry out education reform as an important political task. Under the new regulation, private schools will be either handed over to the state or cease their operation within two years. The CCP’s suspension of private schools appears to be politically motivated to strengthen ideological control and amounts to misappropriating private assets.

The fallout from the education reform is rippling across the country.

On August 25, 2021, Yingshang School in Anhui Province notified its students’ parents that it closed its doors. In 2020, the school was a flagship in Yingshang County’s investment promotion campaign. The Jiangsu Zhufeng Education Group established it and invested in it. It was to provide elementary, junior high, and high school education. The campus has a construction area of ​​130,000 square meters and can accommodate 6,300 students. The school year was scheduled to start at the end of August.

Recently, the Huaiyang No. 1 Senior High School in Henan Province announced that the school will be donated in its entirety to the local government to “repay society.” It had a teaching staff of 1,300 and more than 20,000 students. The Henan Provincial Department of Education approved the school in 2002 and started to admit students in 2005. The school was touted as a model high school in Henan Province.

Jiaxiang Foreign Language School in Sichuan Province was turned over to the local government and will operate as a public school. It is the first compulsory education school in Sichuan that was converted from a private school to a public school after the implementation of the “Notice on Suspending the Approval of the Establishment of Private Compulsory Education Schools” that the Sichuan Provincial Department of Education had issued on June 11, 2021. The Notice requires all local governments to suspend the approval of private schools in the compulsory education stage.

In Hunan Province, on June 22, 2021, the Department of Education issued a notice on regulating private compulsory education. It requested that private junior high and primary schools reduce their students to below five percent of the total compulsory education students. It amounts to a reduction of approximately 364,000 students. Further, Hunan Province will no longer approve new private compulsory education schools.

In Jiangsu Province, the CCP Education Work Leading Group issued a directive stating that it will no longer approve new private compulsory education schools. The order sets the goal of reducing students at private compulsory education schools to below five percent of the entire compulsory education students within two or three years.

Sources:

1.) The Government of the People’s Republic of China, August 25, 2021
http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-08/25/content_5633202.htm

2.) Zhihu, August 3, 2021
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/396201138

On August 30, Dong Jingwei, China’s Vice Minister of State Security (MSS), said that the number of espionage cases in the economic and financial sectors in 2020 were seven times what they were five years ago. At the same time, the MSS has “strengthened work in non-traditional areas such as bio-security, network security, and data security, and has achieved rich results.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission held a press conference on August 30. Dong, who was once rumored to have defected and fled the country, made his public appearance and made the above statement in response to media questions.

Dong Jingwei said that the national security organs “organized and mobilized the whole society to fight the anti-espionage war.”

Dong mentioned that MSS has achieved comprehensive coverage of the National Security People’s Defense Line. After the activation of the national security reporting platform in 2018, the number of tips submitted by the public has continued to increase, reaching a total of more than 11,000. MSS has launched investigations based on many of the submissions.

Source: Central News Agency, August 30, 2021
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202108300301.asp