China: Professor Who Estimated The Cost Of Running The Communist Party Expelled From University

A 49-year-old professor of economics at China’s Guizhou University, who had recently published an article estimating the cots of maintaining the Communist Party apparatus, has been expelled from his job, China Change has reported.

The professor, in an article titled “Can We Leave Party Out of Economic Research?”, had calculated that the “the cost to maintain them, including the loss of wealth caused by maintaining them, is estimated at 2 trillion yuan ($316.28 billion in February 2018 exchange rate) annually, with every Chinese carrying a burden of roughly 15,000 yuan ($2191.58, same exchange rate) each.”

He had also published a detailed analysis of his research under the title “How the Estimate of All of Mainland China’s Government, Party, Mass Organization and State Enterprise Annual Costs Coming to 2 Trillion Was Calculated”. This, however, has since been deleted from his page on the blog service of Sina.

In his analysis, he said that if “nothing changes, the society that has to sustain the more government officials will ultimately collapse”.

The university and party office have refused to respond to his repeated requests demanding a formal statement of reasons for the sanction.

The professor’s WeChat account and blog have been shut down.

In November 2017, he was barred from teaching and advising graduate students. On 15 August this year, the university expelled him for “long-running publication and spreading online of politically mistaken speech, writing politically harmful articles, and creating a deleterious influence on campus and society.”