Xi on governance deficits; Tibet white paper; Xu Zhangrun; Huawei; Meng Hongwei

Happy Wednesday.

I still do not have a good answer to the question of why the authorities waited so long to discipline Tsinghua Professor Xu Zhangrun. It might be worth considering whether the timing has anything to do with the symposium in Beijing last week for teachers of ideological and political theory, and whether or not Xu may be used as a negative example of academics who have wavered in their “confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics” and their patriotism?

I also wonder if the Xu case will lead to leadership changes at Tsinghua. Chen Xu 陈旭 has been Party Secretary of the school since 2013 and Qiu Yong 邱勇 President since 2015. Both have academic backgrounds and perhaps the Party Center will decide it needs tougher hands overseeing the school, as they did with the appointment last fall of Qiu Shuiping 邱水平, who has extensive experience in the Politics and Law bureaucracy, as Party Secretary of Peking University? (see Sinocism 10.…