ChinaGeeks has translated an essay by legal professor He Weifang. From their introduction:
On May 14th the Work Group for Education of the Party Committee and the Department of Education of Fujian province issued a new set of regulations concerning “professional ethics” of higher education teachers with the intent to effectively prevent “the dissemination of misguided or erroneous speech against the general and specific policies of the Party, the basic theory of the Party, the law and the constitution of the country during the course of teaching, which leads to a harmful effect on conveying correct ideas and political ideals to the students”.
And from the translation:
Some “relevant people in the education circles” in Fujian refuted criticism [directed against these regulations] by stating that “they merely contain specifications of particular passages in the ‘Higher Education Law’ and the ‘Teachers Law’”. The strange thing is that these “relevant people” did not actually say what parts of the law they “specified”. And although every execution of government power [in order to modify existing laws] needs to be explicitly authorized, it was impossible to find out under whose authority the two organs introduced these “regulations”.
Decisively implement the regulations, strongly promote the building of teachers professional ethics!
In this document, which sounds like a law but is not a law, “the dissemination of misguided or erroneous speech against the general and specific policies of the Party, the basic theory of the Party, the law and the constitution of the country during the course of teaching, which leads to a harmful effect on conveying correct ideas and political ideals to the students” is determined as one of the 10 major issues concerning teacher’s professional ethics. It also states that teachers who bring about serious consequences and negative influences [by this kind of behavior] should have their teaching qualification revoked and their employment terminated. Without a doubt these [regulations] pose severe restrictions on the rights granted to teachers by the constitution and the law and a further discussion about its legitimacy is needed.
