Chun Shenjun (a pseudonym), a former official in the Chinese Communist Party system for more than 20 years who now lives in California, said that China’s “international schools” are losing their edge and that the Communist Party has tightened its grip on the Education system in recent years. Pictured are students on the Stanford University campus.
Although international school tuition in mainland China is much higher than that of public schools, since 1987, when foreign embassies in Beijing were allowed to open schools for the children of embassy staff, international schools have become the educational institution that many mainland Parents have sought to send their children to.
According to Chun Shenjun (a pseudonym), a former Communist Party official for more than 20 years who now lives in California, China’s “international schools” are losing their edge, as the Communist Party has tightened its grip on the education system in recent years, making it difficult for even international schools, which used to be slightly less regulated, to escape.
International Schools Have Party Branches
International schools on the mainland can be divided into three categories: “foreign-run international schools,” run by foreign institutions or legally resident foreigners; “private international schools,” run by Chinese private capital; and public schools that run Another category is “private international schools,” which are run by Chinese private capital; and another category is “international departments” and “international classes” run by public schools. In addition to foreigners or students with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan compatriot documents, many mainland parents choose international schools because they want to send their children to study abroad.
In 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Education began to regulate various forms of international classes and departments of high schools in terms of enrollment and fees. What is interesting is that in 2014, the state introduced the 2017 College Entrance Examination Reform Program, which reduced the weight of English subject scores in college entrance exam admissions, lowering the test score from 150 to 100, and the system began to place less emphasis on English education.
At the 2015 National Congress of the Communist Party of China, another deputy to the National People’s Congress suggested that the international curriculum for high schools must be regulated and that content involving ideology, educational sovereignty, national sovereignty and national religion must be strictly reviewed. Chunshen Jun took this as a sign that the CCP central government was beginning to tighten its foreign exchanges and close its doors from education, and soon afterwards there were various meetings in Shanghai to overhaul international curriculum schools.
According to an online transcript of the “Shanghai Foreign-Related Private School Policy Interpretation Meeting” revealed in October 2016, it was suggested that the CPC Central Committee had begun to pay attention to the development of international curriculum schools out of control, arguing that “some schools are foreign-owned or have foreign backgrounds, Sino-foreign joint ventures or foreign investment in the form of The form of domestic intervention, breaking the Chinese laws and regulations; again, the introduction, integration and selection of teaching materials for international curriculum schools have serious problems.” Under policy pressure, the international section of public schools converted into private schools, while private international schools, add national curriculum.
The wall between Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan students and mainland students
Students in international schools have now begun to diverge, Chun Shenjun said, because children from Hong Kong and Taiwan will quarrel with children from the mainland, and teaching materials in international schools will promote Communist ideals, such as stating that Hong Kong people are thugs and that the country will not give up its armed reunification with Taiwan, Chun Shenjun said, adding, “Gradually the kids will split. At first they all still took the same school bus, but then they had to take separate buses, and classes were split up.”
According to Chunsun, some international schools even end up with a wall inside the campus, where students must have a passport from Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, or be of foreign nationality to attend classes with foreign teachers. This not only removes the opportunity for mainland students to be protected from the Chinese Communist Party’s brainwashing curriculum, but mainland students in international schools also appear isolated and have long since lost the original purpose for which the international schools were founded, and have no opportunity to communicate.
Chinese parents: some things cannot be said
Chunshen said that many parents know that the Chinese Communist Party’s teaching materials or news are wrong, but they cannot tell their children because unlike adults, children can learn to hide and live a “two-faced” Life. His wife would always tell the children to be careful about what they said outside, and that some things should only be said at Home, not outside.
Chun Shenjun said, “I don’t want to tell lies to my children, and I don’t want them to become that kind of person (two-faced person).” So often, he can only talk less about sensitive topics. He believes that many Chinese parents are selective in what they say and try to hide it for the sake of their children to avoid their children becoming the “other” group in society, he said, “If children say outside that the CCP is doing wrong, they may be hurt, so parents So parents simply don’t say anything.”
Most parents ask their children not to be “radicalized” unless they have decided not to return to China after studying abroad. In China, Chunshen says, it is “radical” to be dissatisfied with reality, to disagree with it, and to not be accommodating collectively. The Chinese Communist Party has a tight surveillance system, with neighborhood committees in the city, districts and county units above, and layers of jurisdiction in each department. If one person behaves “radically”, a dozen people will come to deal with you; if you resist, more people will come to suppress you. The CCP’s strategy is to make an example of the monkey, so the individual is powerless to resist the collective.
International schools were once the educational purgatory of the mainland
Mrs. Liu, a Chinese immigrant to the U.S. for many years, said that in addition to developing her children’s English language skills, the most important reason for enrolling them in an international school was to escape the Chinese system’s brainwashing education. The school Mrs. Liu chose used Cambridge textbooks, and the teachers were all foreign teachers, making it a relatively clean place in the Chinese education system. She said, “Chinese politics, Culture and history are all altered and distorted versions by the Chinese Communist Party. Instead of having your child brainwashed, you should go to an international school.”
Mrs. Liu didn’t think that even international schools today could escape the clutches of the Chinese Communist Party, and was glad her children had graduated, otherwise she wouldn’t have known how to deal with it. She said that many intellectuals in China are actually very contradictory. On the one hand, they want to have a free and democratic society, but on the other hand, they are forced to settle for the status quo because of the vested interests provided by the Chinese Communist Party, and they are prone to mental breakdown.
Mrs. Liu said, “Chinese children have to take political science classes at university, but international schools don’t have this problem. Going abroad also doesn’t require being indoctrinated with those political ideas, which is one of the reasons why we chose to emigrate.” In China, all messages are filtered, and she hopes that her next generation will have more choices, whether in academics or in being a human being.
Chinese Communist society and parents give birth to pinkies
In recent years, there have been many “pinkos” overseas, who have been loudly promoting the CCP’s policies and criticizing American society on the Internet, while defending the “country” with the posture of “war wolves. As the Chinese Communist Party has moved from a poor country to a weak one, to a belt and road diplomacy, the younger generation has been inspired by the so-called “patriotic” sentiment and has become a sounding board for the Chinese Communist Party.
Mrs. Liu said, “The Chinese Communist Party has educated a stupid next generation. Because there is a lot of history ahead [that] they have not walked through, young people are often less aware than our generation.” She lamented that under the CCP system, people only “look to money”; in a highly competitive environment, everyone is an enemy and it is difficult to treat people with sincerity, which eventually turns into an indifferent society. Although the pinkies also grew up in the authoritarian CCP society, most of them do not feel restricted by the numbness in entertainment and consumption. Mrs. Liu said, “This, coupled with the fact that the CCP has always emphasized in its historical discourse that it is the ‘savior of the nation’ and saved the Chinese people from the humiliating emotions of imperial aggression, is why there are so many little pinkos who lack the ability to think.”
Chun Shenjun said that many overseas students still only brush WeChat and read Weibo after they leave the country, and only accept the news controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, probably also because of their parents, saying, “Even if parents are inclined to a democratic and free society, they will still avoid their children to ‘protect’ them from (real information) because the child may not know how to live a ‘two-faced’ life.” It is under the distorted system of the Chinese Communist Party and parents’ excessive fear that these little pinks are created.
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