Chinese college cracks down on kissing
BEIJING • A Chinese college has come under fire for deploying squads dressed in military uniforms to crack down on couples who kiss and cuddle on its campus.
The student patrols wear camouflage and helmets, and perform intimidating nighttime drills marching around Binzhou Vocational College, in the eastern Shandong province, according to videos shared on Chinese social media.
A college official said the squads were responsible for clamping down on a range of “inappropriate behaviour,” including smoking and dropping litter. But many in China have expressed outrage that they have also been given powers to warn couples against showing public affection.
Many in China — particularly older generations — are deeply conservative, and public displays of affection are rare in the country. But an adventurous generation of young, mainly urban Chinese are pushing back the frontiers of what is acceptable, and attitudes are far removed from the puritan days of radical Communist Party rule that their parents lived under.
The campus crackdown comes amid a wider war on immoral living that has been launched since Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, assumed leadership of the party in 2012.
Crass and vulgar comment has been targeted on the Chinese internet, while authorities have sought to curb news reports promoting “Western values.”
Strict regulations on gluttony and “improper sexual relations” have been rolled out f or t he Communist Party’s 88 million members.
However, t here was a backlash on social media after a video of Binzhou Vocational College’s student squad went viral. It showed a trio of men wearing military attire confronting an embracing couple.
The Paper, a Shanghaibased news portal, quoted a college employee saying that the patrol had only sought to give the couple a warning, but that the male student “threw a fit.”
Many of the comments on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, expressed anger that touchy- feely couples were being intimidated by the military-style squads.
“What a freak school!” said one. “The headmaster obviously doesn’t have a happy marriage.”
Media reports said the school had warned in an online post that “serious offenders” could have their names released and face public criticism on the campus.
It comes after another college in the city of Rizhao — also in Shandong province — came under fire last year for rolling out a campaign against kissing, cuddling and “uncivilized” behaviour.
The Shandong Foreign Languages Vocational College set up a designated room where students could see photographs of their peers who been involved in “uncivilized behaviour,” such as holding hands.