Xia Yeliang: The China Americans Don't See

A Peking University economics professor who was sacked for his political views explains the underside of elite Chinese higher education.

By David Feith David.Feith@wsj.com Oct. 25, 2013

The 21st-century romance between America's universities and China continues to blossom, with New York University opening a Shanghai campus last month and Duke to follow next year. Nearly 100 U.S. campuses host "Confucius Institutes" funded by the Chinese government, and President Obama has set a goal for next year of seeing 100,000 American students studying in the Middle Kingdom. Meanwhile, Peking University last week purged economics professor Xia Yeliang, an outspoken liberal, with hardly a peep of protest from American academics……. His political awakening came later, in 1987-89, when he studied management at the University of Toronto, visited several European democracies—and read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose." Friedman's writing helped make Mr. Xia a classical liberal and, by the mid-1990s, a student of economics. Today he cites F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, James Buchanan and Gary Becker among his intellectual idols. The list also includes Xiakoai Yang, the Chinese economist—and Mao-era political prisoner—who convinced him that China cannot thrive without imitating the institutions, and not just the technologies, of the West....To Read More.....

My Take - So it appears that academic integrity is also an oxymoron, and the reason? 

Because "when they come to China, sometimes they are treated as honored guests." That includes, he says, fat speaking fees, grand banquets and five-star accommodations."  In spite of all their grand posturing and claims of integrity...academia is full of the same kind of people they claim to have contempt for.  Is there a word for disgusting?  Oh, yes...disgusting!