Commentary: Two Decades of Graft at China’s Top University Demand Systemic Reform

While public attention in China recently fixated on the controversial remarks of a Peking University economics professor, a far more consequential scandal has quietly reached its legal conclusion. On Aug. 24, a court in Liaoning province sentenced Ren Yuzhong, the former vice president of Peking University, to eight years in prison for bribery.

The contrast in public reaction is striking. Academic debates, however heated, are a matter of opinion. Systemic corruption, however, strikes at the very heart of institutional integrity. The sentencing of Ren should serve as a wake-up call for China’s higher education sector.