Uproar over Thanksgiving sweets as Chinese university says it does not promote ‘religiously Western holidays’

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On Thursday, according to screenshots shared online, an employee of the Harbin Institute of Technology in northeast China wrote on the popular WeChat platform: “Today is Thanksgiving in West and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the students in Dormitory # 17 for supporting my work. “

“Starting at 7:50 am, I will distribute candy in the lobby,” added the woman, nicknamed Wang, along with two photos of a box of chocolate candies.

This offer was met with a barrage of insults from a student, who accused it of being “inappropriate” by propagating “this kind of Western vacation”.

“As a representative of the (school) administration, haven’t you considered the implications of the public celebration of Western holidays?” wrote the student. “Please stop this activity immediately. Otherwise, I will report it to the relevant school department.”

Wang apologized in a follow-up message for “not thinking” and vowed “to be more careful in the future.”

As footage of the conversation went viral online, becoming one of the hottest topics on China’s Twitter-like service Weibo, the school released a statement early Friday saying that after an investigation it had concluded that “the dorm supervisor’s chocolate candy offer was based on good intentions. So were the messages from the students.”

“The school does not promote (the celebrations) of Western holidays with religious connotations and strictly prohibits religious activities on campus,” the statement added.

Numerous comments online were critical of both the student’s response and the school’s statement, with one user writing “how can you say the snitching and threats were based on good intentions?”

“When foreigners celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival or (Lunar New Year), we call it a ‘cultural export’,” another Weibo user wrote. “When it’s the other way around, why is it ‘worshiping foreign things and flattering foreign countries’?”

Another Weibo user asked sarcastically, “The Gregorian calendar has religious overtones too, should we boycott it too?”

Ideological control

Since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power in late 2012, colleges and universities across the country have faced increasing pressure to reign in speeches and activities inconsistent with the orthodox vision of the ruling Communist Party. Calls have been made in recent years to boycott Western holidays such as Christmas on some campuses across China.

Xi said in 2016 that China must “make universities strongholds that adhere to the Party leadership,” adding that the Party must increase the capacity of its grassroots organizations in schools to do “ideological and political work.”

Critics of the government have cited a growing number of cases involving liberal professors and students silenced or expelled – often after being denounced by other students – as examples of tightening ideological control and the disappearance of academic freedom in the country’s higher education sector.

Authorities also worked to include more of Xi’s writings and opinions in a compulsory college curriculum. Starting in the fall semester of 2020, 37 of China’s top colleges and universities started offering a course titled “An Insight into Socialist Thought with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era of Xi Jinping.”

While the century-old Harbin Institute of Technology was not among the 37, the elite school was recently blacklisted by the Trump administration because of its alleged ties to the People’s Army. release, his students being banned from entering the United States and his access to engineering software would have been interrupted.

“Considering the US sanctions against the school, what the student did was completely reasonable,” wrote a user on Weibo. “There are so many other days to express gratitude – why do we have to do it on ‘Western Thanksgiving’?”

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