Over the past couple of weeks, university and college students in Hong Kong have launched a series of strikes aimed at forcing the government of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) to withdraw its order to implement a “moral and national education” curriculum in primary and secondary schools, and for the time being there is no indication that the students are going to drop their campaign.
Hong Kong is a juicy morsel in China’s mouth. Originally, the Beijing government thought that, having retrieved this choice cut from its former British colonial rulers, it could just sit back and enjoy the meal.
China’s leaders probably never imagined that, 15 years later, they would still not have managed to swallow it, or that they would find the meat to be full of prickly little bones that stick in the throat. In Hong Kong, the “China model” has run up against serious obstacles.
The current wave of controversy in Hong Kong, which is officially a Special Administrative Region of China, can be traced back to May. That is when the Hong Kong government, acting on instructions from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), set in motion a plan to introduce “national education” into the school curriculum this month, the start of the new academic year.
Much to the government’s consternation, after the content of a 30-odd-page China Model National Conditions Teaching Manual was made public, it caused an uproar among parents, students and teachers, and the row is still going on.
The controversial passages in the teaching guide contain the following points: It says that China follows a people-based ideology and has implemented socialist democracy, and that this system has four main democratic structures.
It says that the “Chinese model” is an ideal system that takes the people as its foundation.
It claims that Chinese government officials are selected according to their performance and evaluations, and that this merit-based system of appointing officials, inherited from the imperial civil service examination system, has produced an advanced, selfless and united ruling group that ensures stable governance.
The handbook contrasts this system with the multiparty kind of democracy practiced in Europe and the US, which it says involves destructive rivalry between two main parties while the public suffers the consequences.
The Hong Kong public reacted by denouncing the proposed curriculum as “brainwashing.” Leung has since canceled the three-year limit for implementing the curriculum and said that moral and national education will not be introduced as a school subject for five years. Elections for Hong Kong’s parliament, the Legislative Council, are also over — but the student protest movement continues, as people demand that the curriculum be withdrawn altogether.
Students in Hong Kong refuse to be brainwashed. From the descriptions of the “China model” quoted above, it can clearly be seen that they are saying “no” to being forced to study bogus notions.
Hong Kong was ruled by Britain for a long time, so the public has a good understanding of how party politics works. For Hong Kongers, accepting China’s definition of Western democracy would be no more sensible than asking a eunuch for advice about sex.
This is by no means the only bogus notion that has been foisted on Hong Kong. Former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) had promised that Hong Kong would be run on a “one country, two systems” model and that this system would remain unchanged for 50 years.
However, although less than a third of that time has passed, everything is changing in Hong Kong. As the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress approaches, Hu wants to use “national education” to promote “one country, one system” for Hong Kong.
He wants Hong Kong to accept the Chinese version of democracy, in which all power is concentrated in the hands of one party. This is actually the biggest hoax of all, and it completely subverts the principles laid down in Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
Living as they do under the eaves of “one China,” it can be foreseen that the Hong Kong public’s efforts to maintain a different system from the rest of China will be fraught with difficulties.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is a sovereign state, but ironically, its current leaders keep doing everything they can to put the “one China” hat on their own heads.
Many Taiwanese feel that the policies that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government has been implementing one by one are making him look more like a Hong Kong-style chief executive than a proper head of state.
Take, for example, two recent issues that are both related to Hong Kong.
Last month, when a boat carrying protesters from Hong Kong set out to make a landing on the disputed Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), the Taiwanese government dispatched coast guard vessels to supply the protesters with extra food, water and fuel, and when the Japan Coast Guard detained 14 of the protesters, Taiwan’s National Security Council convened a meeting and strongly demanded that the Japanese authorities set them free.
Now, however, as tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong take to the streets to resist brainwashing, Ma, who is a Hong Konger by birth, has suddenly fallen silent.
The attitude of Ma and his government to the two issues makes it hard to distinguish their actions and mindsets from those of the People’s Republic of China.
And that is not all. During the four years and three months in which Ma has been in office, Chinese-style hoaxes and brainwashing have been going on throughout Taiwanese society. This is the kind of “China model” that Taiwan has been seeing.
In the political sphere, there is the government’s adherence to the so-called “1992 consensus” and the notion that there is “one China, with each side having its own definition.”
There is its call to “get back to the Constitution of the Republic of China” and the idea that China and Taiwan are “two areas of one country.” In economics, there was Ma’s pledge that he would accept a 50 percent cut in salary if the government failed to meet his “6-3-3” election campaign pledge of achieving annual GDP growth of 6 percent, lowering unemployment to less than 3 percent and raising annual per capita income to US$30,000.
Let us not forget his assurances that the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement signed by Taiwan and China would help Taiwan sign free-trade agreements (FTA) with other countries, that the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement between Taiwan and the US would open the door to an FTA, and that Taiwan could join the Trans-Pacific Partnership within eight years.
Ma also promised that his presidency would usher in a “golden decade” for Taiwan.
Have any of Ma’s promises turned out to be true? Do any of them match the reality? Good as they may sound, none of these falsehoods can turn into the truth, even if they are repeated a thousand times.
On the contrary, the ghastly reality is that there is a long list of solid statistics to show that Taiwan’s political status and economic situation have been getting worse.
Back in 2002, Taiwanese democracy was described by then-US secretary of state Colin Powell as a “success story.”
This year, however, the “Taiwan story” has reached a point where Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam chose to quote it as a negative example of an economy that has lost its global competitive edge.
Many civic groups in Taiwan have enthusiastically voiced their support for Hong Kong’s anti-brainwashing campaign, but how many people are aware of the widespread brainwashing to which the 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan are being subjected, and how many people are doing anything to stop it?
The “China model” has run up against a roadblock in Hong Kong, but not in Taiwan. This lack of awareness and lack of action may be the biggest danger that Taiwan faces today.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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