“A RE THEY retarded or just plain evil?” So asked a scathing commentary that was circulated recently through China’s social media. The author was referring to officials at the education bureau in Chongqing, a south-western region. On November 2nd they had published a document saying that students wishing to take the university-entrance exam must undergo zheng shen, or political vetting. Those who failed this screening would be barred from taking the test.

What was striking was not so much Chongqing’s reminder that students must toe the Communist Party’s line, but the outcry this triggered in spite of strenuous efforts by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to keep dissent in check. Parents in Chongqing and farther afield expressed incredulity. The term zhengshen briefly lit up Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, before references to it were scrubbed by censors.

Zhengshen has a long history. During Mao’s rule, those sitting the exams were disqualified even for having relatives with dodgy views or wealthy class backgrounds. In the late 1970s Deng Xiaoping decreed that family ties should no longer be an impediment to university entry. Milder forms of vetting have continued. But in practice the screening of school-leavers has usually been “just a formality”, says Zeng Xiaodong of Beijing Normal University. Ms Zeng says she cannot recall a single case in China of a student flunking the political test (though it is unlikely that such cases would be reported in the state-controlled media or publicised by family members).

So why the outcry? One reason is that the word is associated with the totalitarian controls of the Mao era. In the post-Mao period it has been largely replaced in official parlance by euphemisms such as testing a candidate’s “political and ideological qualities”. On November 8th officials in Chongqing issued an apology. They said using the word zhengshen had been a mistake. All that was meant was that candidates for the entrance exam must undergo ideological screening as long ago ordered by the central government.

A newspaper in the capital, Beijing News, went further—attacking zhengshen itself. It called on the government to abolish all “unreasonable and unnecessary” conditions for university admission. The screening of journalists may not be going quite as well as the party would like.