Students vow to end bureaucracy

Convention asks union leaders to treat each other equally

Student unions at China’s top 41 universities jointly vowed to reduce bureaucracy that has long existed in Chinese universities, which a Party school professor considers the best time to clean up among young people.

Some of China’s top universities, including Peking University and Tsinghua University, and 39 others signed a letter of the “student leader self-discipline convention” on Saturday on the WeChat account of the All-China Students’ Federation, calling for nationwide student leaders to abandon bureaucratic behavior and to “treat each other equally.”

The convention has been viewed close to 100,000 times on WeChat as of press time.

The six-article convention came after an uncomfortable dialogue within the student union of Chengdu Aeronautic Polytechnic University in Sichuan Province was exposed on October 1 and sparked online anger and criticism.

In the dialogue, a junior college student was abused and lectured by senior student leaders for mentioning the union president in the chat group by name instead of calling him “president.”

A screenshot was released and soon went viral on October 1.

Netizens showed their displeasure and cited it as a bad example in student circles in the country.

Chinese student unions were sometimes criticized as a place tinted with bureaucratic behaviors, Feng Zihao, a former student leader who graduated from a university in North China’s Tianjin Municipality, told the Global Times on Sunday.

“Union members would drink with student leaders, and new members would drink on behalf of leaders when others toast with them to show their respect,” Feng said.

The convention also asked student leaders not to take advantage of their position to seek personal interests, to pursue extravagance or indulge in a life of pleasure.

The bureaucratic behaviors are “derived from some officials’ behavior in China, and has long existed at universities,” Su Wei, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Chongqing Municipal Committee, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Su believes it is the right time to deal with such bad practices in school following a rectification campaign among government officials as part of a nationwide anti-corruption drive launched at the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012.

Li Ji, vice director of the Communist Youth League (CYL) Central Committee’s school department, told China National Radio (CNR) on Sunday that the change in student unions is underway, and the convention was first drafted in September considering the severity of the issue.