Delegates during the closing session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 11, 2024. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
Beijing Institute of Technology has fired a law professor after she raised questions in class about the lack of women in China’s top leadership, sparking debate on Chinese social media over the limits of academic discussion in Chinese universities.
The university announced on Sept. 29 that Pei Yi, an assistant professor at its School of Law, had been dismissed, stating that Pei had seriously violated teachers’ professional ethics and codes of conduct. The university added that it was revoking her qualification to serve as a graduate adviser and her qualification to hold a teaching position.
The university did not specify what conduct prompted the disciplinary action.
Videos and screenshots subsequently circulated online showing Pei discussing women’s political participation in a class.
A video, reposted by prominent Chinese citizen journalist X account @whyyoutouzhele, shows what appears to be a class presentation slide with someone, allegedly Pei, talking in the background. The person, who’s not visible in the video, is discussing increasing the proportion of women participating in politics and how to implement women’s political rights.
The speaker questions the absence of women from China’s top political leadership and asks students to consider whether an all-male leadership body should itself be viewed as extreme. She then asked how many women should be on the seven-member Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s top decision-making body.
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“If we really want equality, then the capable should go up, but is it really the capable who go up?” the speaker said.
Meanwhile, a screenshot circulating online of what appeared to be a class presentation slide carried the title, “Pei Yi: Discussing the Gender Composition of the Seven Standing Committee Members and Women’s Political Participation.”
The circulation of these materials has led some Chinese netizens to question whether her dismissal was directly related to her discussion of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Chinese regime’s highest political leadership group.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Beijing Institute of Technology for comment and did not receive a response as of publication time.
Beijing Institute of Technology is one of the seven Chinese universities commonly known as the “Seven Sons of National Defense,” a group of public universities with longstanding ties to China’s defense research and military-industrial complex. These universities have been placed in the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List, which imposes export controls on entities deemed to present particular concerns.
Gao Hui contributed to this report.
