China's Education Minister Yuan Guiren's call to ban textbooks promoting Western values from Chinese universities has sparked intense debate among members of the academe, most of whom reject the notion that foreign pedagogy poses a threat to the Communist Party's survival.

Yuan's remarks, made last month, are in line with the government's drive to promote ideological loyalty to the party and implement a more Marxist approach to learning.

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Critics have pointed out that the Education Minister's comments is a stark contrast to the one he pushed for four years ago when he dismissed the potential of foreign materials in undermining China's socialist-centered education system.

Thousands of Chinese students have studied abroad and yet show no signs of having been affected in the "nest of capitalism," Yuan said, according to a March 2011 article published by the state-run Jinghua Times.

Intellectuals have also criticized the hypocrisy of condemning Western values since Communism in itself, was introduced by the West.

Karl Marx was not from the East, said a former Peking University economist who was dismissed in 2013 for what he claimed had been because of his subversive political views.

Likewise, students and teachers have argued that China only stands to gain from foreign pedagogy.

According to the Institute of International Education, Chinese students in the U.S. have grown 75 percent in the past year, accounting for the largest group of foreign students in the country. This group includes President Xi Jinping's daughter who went to Harvard University, the New York Times relayed.

In the wake of such criticism, state media have attempted to clarify Yuan's strongly-worded comments, explaining that the problem does not lie with Western thought per se, but rather with "Western political values."

Western political ideologies such as neo-liberalism and constitutional democracy are anti-socialist and could only lead to political anarchy, the China Youth Daily explained.

TagsYuan Guiren, Western values, Socialism, Chinese education