A security guard stands at the gate to the campus of Fudan University in Shanghai, China on on April 28, 2017. A professor killed the Communist Party secretary at the school of mathematics at China's prestigious Fudan University on Monday, June 7, 2021, police and school authorities said. Photo: AP

A professor killed the Communist Party secretary at the school of mathematics at China’s prestigious Fudan University, police and school authorities said.

Police identified the suspect in custody as a 39-year-old professor whose surname is Jiang, saying he used a knife in committing the crime on the school campus in Shanghai.

The school said in a brief statement that Wang Yongzhen, 49, was killed on Monday afternoon and the department had established a working group to fully cooperate with the police investigation.

Police said in their statement that Jiang bore a grudge against Wang and has admitted his guilt. Fudan was the scene of another murder in 2013 when a graduate student poisoned his roommate after a dispute.

Party secretaries are ubiquitous on Chinese campuses, charged with maintaining ideological purity, preventing the dissemination of Western concepts of human rights and free speech, and ensuring students and faculty remain loyal to the party.

Fudan is ranked as one of the world’s top 100 universities with strong overseas connections, although its connections to China’s ruling Communist Party have attracted controversy.

Several thousand people rallied in Hungary’s capital on Saturday against an agreement with Fudan to open a branch in the city, citing the cost and ties to China’s authoritarian rulers.