THOUSANDS of university students, furious about fake diplomas, rampaged through an eastern Chinese city for two days this week, unnerving the nation’s leaders who have grown mistrustful of campus unrest since the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989.
The violence in Nanchang, capital of the relatively undeveloped southeastern province of Jiangxi, reflects growing unrest among students under pressure from higher school fees and corruption among officials who see education as an opportunity to make money.
As many as 10,000 students from the Jiangxi Clothing Vocational College marched through their campus on Monday after reports in the state-run media that the college had deceived new students about their eventual qualification and had issued fake diplomas.
Students said that they were not to blame for smashing up classrooms and computers. They said that hooligans from the city took advantage of the chaos to wreak havoc. However, city police said that the students had engaged in vandalism and looting. One officer said that anti-riot police had been deployed to restore order.
State television aired a lengthy investigative report on how the privately run college had recruited about 20,000 students — well above approved quotas — in the past three years by promising them diplomas it was not qualified to award. The Nanchang outbreak was the worst campus violence since June, when 10,000 students ransacked a college affiliated to Zhengzhou University in the capital of central Henan province after it issued diplomas that failed to carry the prestigious university’s name.
Private colleges have boomed in China in the past decade to accommodate those who fail the fiercely competitive entrance exams for state universities. But private colleges are badly regulated and highly commercial, and their falling standards make it difficult for the students to find jobs. At least six incidents of campus unrest have erupted in the past year. Increasing disturbances will worry China’s Communist Party leaders, who remember the weeks of discontent and political chaos that preceded the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown.
At southwestern Sichuan University, a decision to cut the power and stop students from watching the World Cup triggered angry scenes. At the central Hubei Province Land and Natural Resources Vocational Institute, students were unhappy after one was injured by police.
At the eastern Shandong University of Science and Technology, a confrontation among different ethnic groups was the spark. But the biggest spur to unrest is student discontent over high school fees, which has caused disturbances at the Neusoft Institute of Information in northeastern Dalian, at Zhengzhou University and at Jiujiang College, also in Jiangxi.
Zhou Yongkang, the Minister of Public Security, called yesterday for the Government to strengthen control of China’s increasingly diverse society as economic growth prompts discontent among citizens who expect a bigger share of wealth and opportunity.
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