Indoctrination in Hong Kong
By VERNA YU
HONG KONG — My three-year-old daughter came home one day late last year, proudly waving a paper Chinese national flag that she had made at her kindergarten. The five yellow stars were neatly colored-in amid a sea of red on a piece of paper stuck onto a drinking straw.
“Look, mom, it’s got to have five stars!” she said excitedly. Then she paused.
“Mom, will you take me to see the flag-raising ceremony in Beijing?” she said with her little eyes twinkling expectedly. Then she started humming the Chinese national anthem.
I was taken aback. I murmured: “Yes darling, one day, when you’re older.”
This indoctrination of patriotism is coming a bit too early, I thought. I looked at my daughter and tried to hide my unease.
In the 15 years since Britain handed over this territory to China, Hong Kongers have enjoyed a large degree of freedom and independence from mainland control. But a perceived lack of patriotism among the people here frustrates mainland Chinese officials who do not understand why numerous trade deals aimed at boosting Hong Kong’s economy have failed to win over the hearts of its citizens.
The Hong Kong government, likely prompted by Beijing, has reacted with a new plan to introduce national education classes in the primary and secondary school curriculum in September. Having already witnessed the effect of Communist Party indoctrination on my daughter, I took one look at the new teaching materials and I knew the plan was a step too far.
I was one of the tens of thousands of people who braved scorching heat in humid Hong Kong last Sunday, soaked in sweat, carrying our children on a march under the sweltering sun, saying no to the government’s plan.
The main feature of the new curriculum is a one-sided, totally positive portrayal of Communist Party rule in a government-funded handbook entitled “The China Model.” This teaching material touts the superiority of the Communist regime, depicting its one-party system as “progressive, selfless and united.” It decries multiparty democracy as unfavorable to the livelihoods of ordinary people because, it says, “Malicious fights between political parties lead to people’s suffering.”
The handbook makes no mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Cultural Revolution, or other political movements that led to the deaths of millions of people. It simply praises the government without mentioning its faults — the lack of democracy and free speech, the ubiquitous human rights abuses and the widespread corruption.
I could accept the handbook’s guidelines if the praise of the Communist Party was balanced by a discussion of its failures. But this one-sided version of history is alarming.
It is true that many Hong Kongers harbor ill feelings toward China. And tensions between the people of our territory and the mainland have been particularly high this year.
Hong Kongers are increasingly frustrated that thousands of mainland women cross the border each year to give birth here — we have better hospitals and offer Hong Kong-born children permanent residency. Many people here blame speculators from the mainland for pushing up local property prices, and there are fears that Beijing will not honor its commitment to eventually allow us to freely elect our own government leaders. Recent charges of mainland interference in our normally free press haven’t helped either.
But with all these complaints, we Hong Kongers have a sense of pride in China. We are, in fact, patriotic.
We never hesitate to give donations to help victims of natural disasters on the mainland or give generously to build schools or infrastructure in rural China. We feel proud when mainland Chinese athletes win medals at the Olympics and when China sends rockets to space. China’s rise as an economic powerhouse makes us feel good.
Even after 150 years of British colonial rule, we never doubt our Chinese identity. Most people in Hong Kong have parents or grandparents who fled the mainland to escape hunger and the upheavals of the bloody civil war in the 1940s, but they remain deeply attached to their roots.
Because we care about our country, we share the pain of the Chinese citizens whose rights are violated. Tens of thousands of people gather every year on the night of June 4 to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown. And when a little-known Tiananmen movement activist, Li Wangyang, died under mysterious circumstance in June, over 20,000 people rallied to urge the mainland authorities to investigate his death.
What we object to is the imposition of the party line on our children. We should be allowed to love the country in our own way. Children in Hong Kong need to know about the huge progress that China has made in the past 30 years, but they also have the right to know about the sins of the past. Millions of “class enemies” were killed in Mao Zedong’s “land reforms.” At least 30 million died of starvation during his “Great Leap Forward,” and millions more during the Cultural Revolution.
Students should also learn about the price of official corruption today. During the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 shoddily built school buildings collapsed and crushed many children who otherwise might have survived.
I want my children to love our country, but I don’t want them to be in love with a false image. I want them to learn about China’s wonderful achievements, but also about the realities of the country’s less-glorious past and current problems.
We all have a responsibility to face with open eyes the mistakes that have been made so that we can help to improve our future.
Verna Yu is a freelance writer.
I enjoyed your article, and I believe you are a sincere and well-intentioned person.
ReplyDeleteHowever, ask yourself. Did Hong Kongers take to the streets in protest before 1997, over the blatant pro-colonial agenda of the British run education system then, which completely airbrushed out the long and sordid history of British colonial atrocities against China?
I visited the museum in Kowloon about 20 years ago. The Opium war was airbrushed out in exactly the same way that the Chinese government now glosses over the more uncomfortable aspects of its own history.
So did you, and other Hong Kong people protest against the racist, pro-colonial textbooks used before 1997?
If not, why not?
Thank you for reading my article and for your comments. I appreciate your comments but I'm afraid your speculation about textbooks under the colonial era is not based on facts. I suspect you did not go to school in Hong Kong -- am I right? In Chinese history lessons taken by secondary students, of course the Opium War and how it all started was in the textbooks, and so was the Anglo-French army's invasion of China and the looting and the burning down of the Yuanming Palace among other atrocities, and also the insulting treaties which gave away Hong Kong's sovereignty. All that was taught at schools and it wasn't a big deal. How else could the teachers explain to the students how HK became a British colony? We didn't protest because there was simply no need to protest. So I'm afraid you cannot accuse the colonial education system of "airbrushing out the long and sordid history of British colonial atrocities against China." That is factually incorrect. Did we HOng Kongers like the Brits? Not really, people moaned about the government, about the racism, about being ripped off etc like elsewhere in the world. It was a them and us relationship. We didn't feel warm and fuzzy about the Brits. In fact before the handover, I saw some of the racist attitude of the Brits and I was truly happy they were about to hand back the sovereignty to China. I'm intrigued about your memory of the museum from 20 years ago -- if that was the case, it was wrong, but just because the museum omitted the Opium War doesn't make it okay now to gloss over China's less glorious past in school classes. This notion that HK people were brain washed by the colonial masters is quite flawed -- the Brits were not keen on manipulating ideology and thinking, they knew we knew we were Chinese, and there was no point and no attempt to give us other ideas. In fact we were never taught to draw or salute to the British or HK colonial flag(most people didn't know what the HK flag looked like), or made to sing "God save the Queen." We always knew we were the Chinese and they were the Brits, they were here to make money and one day they would go home. We happen to be able to thrive under the political system which allowed us a large degree of freedom of speech/assembly/association -- if someone shouted on the street "down with the Brits, down with the Queen", people might stare but they wouldn't get arrested. We had no democracy but we enjoyed the rule of law and most freedoms and rights enjoyed by democratic countries. There was a laissez-faire business environment. That's how HK became successful and that's why our forefathers escaped to Hong Kong from China. If we want Hong Kong to continue thriving, these conditions mustn't change.
DeleteI have the following responses,
ReplyDelete1) No one has ever cast doubt in Hong Kong that our students should learn more about China. China's economic development is impressive, and the country is more involved in the international community. Many people are lifted out of poverty and hunger over the past three decades, and many foreigners are coming to China to learn Chinese culture. But what we argue is that we need a balanced curriculum. While learning China's remarkable development, our students should also know about the darker side of the story, mainly suppression of human rights and corruption. If we want our students to make good contribution to China's development, a balanced and objective understanding of the country is essential.
2) Hong Kong people are indeed very patriotic. We just have Hong Kong activists landed at the Diaoyu Islands to show China's sovereignty, and we could find many comments supporting the activists action in social networking websites. I don't think people will bother to go to the disputed islands if they are not patriotic.
3) We did have protest before the handover, but just not as often as nowadays.
4) Even if we did not protest during the colonial days, it does not mean that we have to remain silent or keep our mouth shut when things go wrong. It is our responsibility to express our views.
5) Students should not be taught to embrace a specific political value or political group. They should not be asked to embrace the communist party, nor the democratic party or any other opponents. They should be given freedom to decide which value or group to support.
Mrs. Yu
ReplyDeleteI thought there was not so many people die in 1958-1961 period.
I born in Henan province, now living in USA. In my high school time, I wonder whether there are many people die, as a fact that textbook covered.
But in later years, I asked over 20 people in different talks, some from the starving Zhumadian Region, which is one of the very regions where the people had most painful experience. But they told me no one starve based on their own memories. And my family with no starved people. People older than 60 would tell me they were very hungry, eat something just like the things refered in some materials I read before, but no one die from hungry. I think 30 million, as a astonishing number, maybe was an exaggerated number compared to real number, I soppose this because that based on historical record and tales, Henan had most starving people, if so, after applied the mortality, a reasonable hypothesis is one can find almost every family share their story about at least died relative. But acturally no one told me that. So here is a tiny suggestion, if you hate someone, a regime, or a group of people, don't easily consider them badly, instead of what, to find fact is a more proper way. Especially when you write something.
Anyway, Good luck, and wish you can publish more excellent articles.
Please forgive my impoliteness, I tried to send you an E-mail, but I couldn't find that, so wrote this comment here. Sorry about this.
Zhao
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteDear Bear, Thank you for writing to me and for expressing your view. You're absolutely right when you say fact-finding is of paramount importance -- as a journalist and writer, this is something I was trained to do from day one. It's good that you have asked around in your native Henan about the starvation, but I'm afraid just because 20 peole you happened to talk to had no knowledge about deaths from the famine does NOT mean no one died. I certainly didn't make up the figure 30 million myself -- many respected scholars have researched into the issue and estimates of the death toll range from 18 million to 45 million. The respected former Xinhua veteran journalist Yang Jisheng (author of Mu Bei (Tombstone)) spent more than 10 years meticulously researching the issue. He carried out extensive interviews across the country and accessed official archives and his estimate was 36 million -- I trust his figure to be authoritative so saying "at least 30 million" in my article is by no means an exaggeration. If you're interested in the issue, Mr Yang has recently written again on this issue. You can find his article at this website:
Deletehttp://cn.nytimes.com/article/china/2012/09/17/cc17yangpreface/cc17yangpreface.pdf
and a shorter summary is here: http://cn.nytimes.com/article/china/2012/09/17/cc17yangpreface/
Once again thank you for writing to me, and I applaude your efforts in trying to find facts, but I'm afraid anecdotes from 20 people in one place cannot represent the situation across the country. You need systematic and extensive research to tell the real situation. Regarding your comments: "if you hate someone, a regime, or a group of people, don't easily consider them badly, instead of what, to find fact is a more proper way." No. 1, I do not "hate" the regime, no.2, as I said, I did not widly make up some numbers in my article, I was quoting from scholarly research. In fact I love my country, and it's precisely because I care about it, I believe we have the responsibility to honestly look at our history to see how we could help improve our country. And until you do more research yourself, I would not be so forthcoming in accusing others of failing to find facts. Thank you. Verna