Earnestly, resolutely, purposefully, consciously, conscientiously and, above all, constantly.



That is how China’s 89 million Communist party cadres are now expected to study and implement the thoughts of their leader, Xi Jinping, after his political ponderings were enshrined in its constitution earlier this week.

According to reports in China’s party-run media, they have already begun.

Two university departments dedicated to the examination of Xi Jinping Thought have this week been created while “study groups” are being promoted across the country as officials scramble to follow the zeitgeist of what Xi has dubbed his “new era”.



The first and most prominent of the Xi-related departments will be at Beijing’s Renmin or People’s University, one of China’s top institutions.

The Beijing Daily newspaper reported that following Xi’s elevation, the university had tasked top scholars with probing what is officially called Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era. They include Ai Silin, president of the School of Marxism at Tsinghua University, Xi’s alma mater, and Han Qingxiang, a senior academic from the Communist party’s Party School.

“[The department] will also help universities around the country incorporate Xi Thought into their textbooks and introduce it to their classrooms, as well as into students’ minds,” the Beijing Daily said.



Liu Wei, the university’s head, told the newspaper: “The establishment of Xi Jinping Thought … is of epoch-making significance.” Liu, who will also be head of the newly-established unit, described its foundation as “a responsibility entrusted by the time to the People’s University of China.”

A second centre is reportedly being set up in Tianjin, a city about 70 miles southeast of Beijing. According to E-North, a local news website, that department opened on Wednesday at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics and will focus on the “ideological and political education” of local students.

Further afield, the Global Times reported that “study groups” were being organised from north to south, where cadres could “learn and implement the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.

Cai Qi, a Xi ally who is Beijing’s Communist party chief and was this week promoted into China’s 25-member politburo, said “studying, promoting and implementing the spirit” of Xi’s thinking was now the Chinese capital’s “top priority”.

Skeptics question how responsive Chinese students are likely to be to Xi’s Marx-tinged musings.



In an interview on the eve of Xi’s ideological elevation, Susan Shirk, a noted China expert who was US deputy assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton, said she currently saw no sign of “popular concern” about his rule. “He appears to be very popular with the public … people in China like a strong leader - just like people in America like a strong leader.”

People in China like a strong leader - just like people in America like a strong leader Susan Shirk

But Shirk questioned whether China’s increasingly worldly and well-educated citizens would embrace or resist having more ideology forced into their classrooms and said such opposition would be a barometer of broader feelings towards the regime.



“I’m waiting to see, for example: Is there more political study in secondary schools? Are these middle class parents going to have their kids wasting their time studying the latest version of Chinese Marxism, which they think is somehow going to hold them back in their educational and career ambitions? I’m waiting to see the ways - if he pursues this kind of more totalitarian vision over society - that society may push back.”

Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California, San Diego, said she suspected a “dictatorial” and highly ideological model would not easily mesh with the realities of 21st century China.

“It just seems out of step to me. It’s kind of history going backward.”

Additional reporting by Wang Zhen