Ten years ago, China's leadership realised that a nation's overall power depends on the quality of its higher education. As its economy grew, it had expanded its system and the number of colleges and universities rose. With massive injections of government funds some universities aspired to match world-class institutions. They spent billions in wooing top foreign-educated and overseas-born Chinese, building cutting-edge research centres, and partnering the world's best educational institutions.

Since Xi came to power in 2012, he had tightened control on academics, with several outspoken professors sacked or jailed, who called for political change. Now universities have to vow ideological loyalty to the Communist Party and Xi's ideas. They also have to pledge obedience to Yuan Guiren, China's education minister, who says textbooks that promote "Western values" will be banned. This aims to strengthen the Party’s control of intellectual life and prevent ideas about rule of law, liberal democracy and civil society from spreading. Seen as dangerous contagions, the Party fears that the discussion of history, multipartyism, separation of powers, elections etc. could undermine its grip on power.

The apparatchiks are more determined to cleanse schools of politically troublesome ideas than to uphold the goal of China to become a mecca of world-class learning. Indeed, the Party seems unable to take future needs into consideration and the country "will pay dearly for this mistake". If education is dominated by rote learning of ideology, young people will not be trained to think critically. China would not be able to build an innovative economy, on which the leadership relies to stay in power. Beijing believes that "patriotic education" is key to inoculating young people against "Western values" and the ideological indoctrination must be tightened.

It looks as though the leadership is turning the clock back to the Mao era, known for the ideological struggle between the intelligentsia and the proletariat. Under Xi, it's about the ideological supervision in universities, urging authorities to step up the party's "leadership and guidance".

University staff and teachers, who want to keep their jobs, play along. The People's Liberation Army announced that it would vet officers and soldiers before they could join, in order to "prevent penetration, sabotage by hostile forces or erosion by corrupt ideas and cultures". Military personnel are now forbidden from blogging and using social media. Does this "cultural Cold War" make sense and would it curb young people's enthusiasm to study abroad?