In 2021, when most of his peers were settling into retirement, 64-year-old Li Ming chose a different path. The law professor – already retired from a leading Beijing university – boarded a six-hour flight from the bustling capital to Tumxuk, a small city deep in western Xinjiang.
Li has remained there since, teaching multiple courses to hundreds of students at a local university as part of China’s Silver Age Teaching Programme – a sweeping state policy that mobilises a growing pool of retired…