in the sense that it still receives government's funding and guidance.

Even it's a private school, Ding is not entitled to abuse or misuse school's resource for his own good. With his unchallenged power and dictatorship in the school, I definitely suspect Ding uses school's funds to pay the huge cost of his lawsuit against Fang.

Sad truth is: there's no law or justice in China to prevent Ding's behavior, and he's the man with all kinds of resource to bribe the jurisdiction and local officials.