For decades, professors at the Central Party School have safeguarded the ideology of China’s Communist Party, indoctrinating each generation of officials in the teachings of Marx, Lenin and Mao.
The school’s work — as a think tank for the party’s top leaders and a training center for its millions of cadres — is largely veiled in secrecy.
More than a dozen current and former professors, researchers, students and party insiders interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity, citing a school-wide gag order because of this year’s sensitive leadership change. School administrators turned down multiple requests for comment. And a brief visit to its leafy campus — with tall stone-facade halls, drab beige dorms and gates patrolled by well-armed police officers — was possible only by accompanying a visiting delegation of foreign academics.
The caution comes in part from the school’s proximity to the country’s top leadership. The list of its former presidents reads like a who’s who of modern Chinese history, including Mao Zedong and President Hu Jintao. And the school’s current chief — a largely ceremonial office — is China’s Vice President Xi Jinping, who is slated next month to replace Hu as China’s top leader.Here is a recent Foreign Policy article on the Central Party School and an excerpt:
Housed in a heavily guarded, unmarked compound far from Tiananmen Square and most of Beijing's government buildings, the Central Party School is both think tank and indoctrination center, "a furnace to foster the spirit of party members," according to a state media report.Here is a Central Party School "Primer" from the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC).
Here is a recent Yale Journal of International Affairs article on China's foreign policy research institutes, which discusses, among other things, the Central Party School.
