A Chinese university’s decision last year to shut down arts and humanities majors due to AI’s impact has sparked heated debate on social media this week.

The discussions were triggered by remarks made by Liao Xiangzhong, a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member and the top official at Beijing’s Communication University of China, during the annual Two Sessions political meetings, which concluded Thursday. 

Liao said the university scrapped undergraduate majors such as photography and comics because the future would be an era of “human-machine cooperation.” A video clip of the remarks later climbed to the top five of the trending topics list on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. 

The Communication University of China, considered one of the country’s top universities for media and arts, canceled five arts majors — photography, comics, visual communication design, new media art, and fashion design — in 2025. Meanwhile, it introduced three new undergraduate programs: “intelligent imaging art,” “intelligent audiovisual engineering,” and “intelligent engineering and creative design.”

Some online observers criticized the move as “abrupt,” while others argued that AI would eventually eliminate most academic disciplines.

On March 10, Liao clarified to domestic media that the majors weren’t canceled entirely but merged into broader disciplines as part of an eight-year academic restructuring campaign at the university.

As an example, he said the “traditional photography major can no longer exist as an independent discipline,” because “today everyone can be a self-media creator and recorder.” The major has been merged into “film and television photography and production.”

The university also closed three humanities majors, including translation, as well as six economics and management majors and two science and engineering programs. Translation, Liao said, “has already been largely replaced by AI,” and “setting up a four-year major for translation in a specific language is a huge waste of national resources.” He added that the university has introduced regulations to prevent students from losing their abilities due to overreliance on AI, but did not specify what the regulations were.

Jilin University in northeastern China, as well as East China Normal University and Nanchang University in eastern China, have also recently announced the closure of arts majors including drama and film literature, broadcasting, directing, and animation.

The trend comes amid a three-year university reform plan launched in 2025 to expand artificial intelligence, science, and data-related programs, as well as growing controversy over the latest AI tools that demonstrate the potential to replace human artists.

Students from the Communication University of China whose majors were affected by the cancellations told Sixth Tone that the adjustments were “not entirely unexpected,” as teachers had already begun introducing AI tools in classes since at least 2022.

“We all sighed at the news, but there weren’t any strong emotions,” said an undergraduate photography major, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “For me, using AI is simply switching to another creative medium or tool. What matters more is my own thinking.”

Many Chinese art-focused universities are increasingly integrating AI into their programs. In 2024, the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts established China’s first School of Artificial Intelligence Art. In 2025, the China Academy of Art launched a professional doctoral track in Artificial Intelligence and Digital Art Design.

“As technology develops, academic disciplines inevitably have to evolve as well,” a Communication University of China visual communication design graduate told Sixth Tone. “But the problems brought by new technologies should be addressed within the field, rather than by simply cutting the discipline altogether.” 

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Shijue Focus/VCG)