2015-01-08
Student leaders Tommy Cheung (L), Alex Chow (center L), Joshua Wong (center R) and Oscar Lai (R), attend a press conference at the pro-democracy movement’s main protest site in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, Dec. 10, 2014.
AFP
Chinese officials have hit out at a lack of patriotism in Hong Kong’s education system as a major factor behind the city’s 79-day Occupy Central pro-democracy movement, in a move that is likely to reignite a heated debate over Beijing’s “patriotic education” proposals for schoolchildren in the former British colony.
Former diplomat and government adviser Chen Zuo’er called on Thursday for Hong Kong’s education secretary to be subject to scrutiny from the central government at all times, in a bid to prevent “noxious weeds” from coming through the system.
Chen, who led the Chinese negotiating team ahead of the 1997 handover to Beijing, warned that the secretary for education is “under the supervision of the central government and Hong Kong society at all times,” and has sworn to uphold the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
Chen lamented a lack of nationalistic feeling among the semiautonomous territory’s young people, blaming the city’s school curriculum for failing to take into account issues of “national security and sovereignty.”
“Why was the education sector in such a mess during Occupy Central?” Chen asked a youth forum in Beijing.
“How did these young men, who were just toddlers at the handover, turn into those people on the front line brandishing the UK national flag and storming into our military camps and government?”
“It is clear that there have been problems all along with education in Hong Kong,” Chen said. “Many people have a distinct lack of national democratic and civic awareness, life goals, and knowledge in geography, history, and culture,” he said.
‘Noxious weeds’
He called on Hong Kong officials to eradicate “noxious weeds” from the education sector, and to allow “green shoots” to flourish.
The Occupy Central movement has campaigned for Beijing to withdraw its electoral reform plan, which will give the city’s five million voters a vote each in the election, but will restrict candidates to just two or three approved by a pro-Beijing committee.
But Beijing has said any reforms must stick to its Aug. 31 decree, and has slammed international support for the Umbrella Movement, saying that the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration on the handover arrangements is “void” and that China answers to no one in exercising sovereignty over Hong Kong.
Hong Kong student groups played a leading role in the Umbrella Movement, which camped out on major roads and intersections amid an ongoing civil disobedience campaign for more than two months beginning on Sept. 28.
In 2013, they came out in force to protest plans to include “patriotic education” and Beijing-approved textbooks in Hong Kong classrooms. The plans have since been shelved.
Beijing is watching
Chan Sik Chee, convenor of the National Education Concern group, said Chen’s comments appear to be a warning to education secretary Eddie Ng.
