The lecturer stood in an airy hall, clicking through slides showing examples of how governments around the world improve their “environmental civilization” — a concept espoused by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The United States has a vast national park system. Germans collect trash with buckets placed inside sewers, the students are told.
Sixty gathered party members — almost all men in their 40s and 50s in uniformly black slacks, black shoes, black hair — sat quietly, absorbing it all.
It’s another morning at the Central Committee Party School, the exclusive training ground for the elite apparatchiks groomed to govern China.
Since becoming paramount leader in 2012, Xi has sought to position the Communist Party at the heart of society and promulgate its ideology to skeptical young Chinese. He has policed speech on campuses and encouraged Communist Party cells to expand inside private corporations.