Wang Mengmeng, who taught the Chinese language and served as a homeroom teacher for over three years at a top public high school in eastern Anhui Province, says both students and teachers are “victims” of the CCP’s ideological control.
China’s education system, she said, is designed to monitor and manipulate thought. Party branches, political instructors, and homeroom teachers all play a role in ensuring student loyalty to the CCP above all else.
As a homeroom teacher, Wang had to attend weekly meetings where school officials drilled Party loyalty into staff. Her role was to force that message on the students.
“Ideological and political education isn’t just a course—it’s a tool for infiltration, brainwashing, and persecution,” she said. “We were made to indoctrinate the students—to make them believe in the importance of the Communist Party, to believe in the state, to believe in the Party.”
Wang developed severe depression and somatization—a condition where emotional stress shows up as physical symptoms like fatigue, pain, or numbness—due to the relentless psychological pressure. She eventually quit and left China in 2023.
She pointed to the so-called “ideological and political education” course as the CCP’s main tool to impose its ideology on both teachers and students.
“The CCP’s ideological and political curriculum is all-pervasive,” Wang told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times in a recent interview. “While it’s mandatory for first-year high school students, the brainwashing goes far beyond the classroom—it’s constant and relentless.”
‘Victims’ of Communist Indoctrination
One method of indoctrination was through making the students write assignments. They were taught to follow a rigid, formulaic structure in their essays. The final paragraph, Wang said, had to say something like: “As youth of the new era, we must follow the leadership of the Communist Party and study Xi Jinping’s Thought.”This format was non-negotiable—it aligned with grading standards for China’s national college entrance exam.
Wang described the ideological control as all-encompassing. Students attended classes six days a week, and political content was woven into every subject. Despite knowing the truth about the CCP’s abuses, she was forced to praise the regime in front of her students and promote hostility toward the United States and Japan.
“You have to tell them, ‘Without the Communist Party, there would be no New China.’”
The internal conflict led to Wang’s breakdown. “I was saying things that went against my conscience but I had no choice. The students had to pass their exams. Whatever I taught had such [brainwashing] content.”
CCP Rule Built on ‘Lies and Violence’: Former Chinese Professor
Li Yuanhua, a former professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing and now a resident of Australia, said the CCP relies on “lies and violence” to prop up its rule.“If the Chinese people clearly understood the Party’s illegitimate rise to power, its betrayal of the nation, and its history of killing its own people, no one would trust it,” Li told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.
‘Red Tourism’ and Propaganda Through Art
Red tourism promotes visits to historic CCP sites, like Mao Zedong’s hometown in Hunan Province or the city of Yan’an, once a Red Army base, in China’s western Shaanxi Province. These trips are designed to glorify the Party’s past and are heavily promoted by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.CCP ‘Exporting Communist Ideology Abroad’
Li also warned that the CCP is pushing its ideology overseas, particularly through Confucius Institutes (CIs)—state-run language and culture programs that are part of the CCP’s United Front Work, operating in foreign universities.“The CIs offer small incentives like free textbooks and funding, but they limit academic freedom,” Li said.
“When the CCP invites 50,000 American students to China, everything they’re shown is staged,” Li said. “The real aim is to influence the future elite of American society. It’s just another propaganda and brainwashing campaign—this time targeting the West’s next generation.”