A music conservatory in China’s southern Guangdong province has become the country’s first university of the arts to establish its very own School of Marxism, according to an announcement published May 8 on the school’s website.

The Xinghai Conservatory of Music, located in the city of Guangzhou and founded in 1957, offers education covering a wide range of both Chinese and Western musical disciplines.

The announcement quoted remarks made by the conservatory’s party secretary, Wang Xiuming, at an “unmasking ceremony” held the previous day. Wang claimed the new School of Marxism would play an important role in the conservatory’s mission “to cultivate reliable and qualified individuals who can shoulder the cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Speaking by telephone to Sixth Tone, Chen Ping, the newly appointed dean of the School of Marxism, emphasized that the establishment of the new school reflected calls by the government to strengthen “political education” of university students, referring to a host of directives issued last year by official bodies.

“The School of Marxism will become the foothold of the study, research, and propagation of Marxism,” Chen said, closely echoing the words of a speech given by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 on the importance of teaching Marxism at educational institutions. After rolling out several more quotes by Xi about fighting back against vulgar culture, Chen said, “We want to cultivate musicians of both excellent artistic and moral fiber.”

It’s not the first time in recent weeks that the union of Marx and music has made news in China. March this year saw the release of a rap song called “Marx Is a Post-90s” that aimed to present the thinker’s philosophies in a way that would resonate with the millennial generation.

Chen, himself a composer of patriotic songs, is not a fan of “Karl Marx Is a Post-90s.” “It isn’t comprehensive enough,” he said, “and so will never become mainstream.” He stated that the conservatory will not encourage students to compose such numbers.

According to a directive published by the Ministry of Education and the Publicity Department, university students in China are required to take courses on the theories of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping.

Yet a 2014 survey of just over 1,000 university students found that more than 40 percent of respondents thought classes on Marxism were uninteresting, and around half admitted they lacked an understanding of Marxist theory.

It remains unclear to what degree the new school will develop the teaching of Marxist thought at Xinghai — after all, courses on the subject are already delivered by the conservatory’s department of ideological and political theory. User of microblogging platform Weibo “Zhuby,” who describes herself as a student at Xinghai Conservatory of Music, replied to messages from Sixth Tone to confirm that students are already required to take courses like Marxist philosophy and Mao Zedong thought.

Regardless of whether the new school will have any real bearing on the conservatory’s curriculum, the announcement has been met with a mixture of skepticism and support by social media users.

“How is this going to help me play Liszt?!” questioned one user, while another ordered “all those people who are saying that music and Marxist theory are bound together to stay where they are, and use Marxist theory to explain a [musical] canon.”

Other commentators, however, came to the defense of the school. “The teaching of ideology exists in every country,” wrote one user. “The only difference is the manner in which it is done. We must teach what needs to be taught.”

Additional reporting by Li You.

(Header image: A man walks through an exhibition hall at the School of Marxism at Tsinghua University, Beijing, Dec. 3, 2014. Xu Xiaofan/VCG)