The CCP’s graveyard
There is no greater fear I have for Hong Kong than to imagine tanks rolling into Central and soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army patrolling through the streets of Causeway Bay.
To see the familiar streets filled with the Hong Kong masses and posters calling for freedom pasted on the walls throughout the territory, how can I not feel a profound sense of alienation and frustration?
To watch the territory of my father fight for democracy in face of the iron fist of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and not be with my comrades.
The battle we face is not as simple as one for democracy or justice, it is fighting for ideals against pragmatic complacency.
This, I declare, is endemic in our Asian societies. We have become servile people in service of maintaining societal harmony. I do not buy this anymore.
The ideal is what we must strive for, and Hong Kong is the battleground for the ideals of democracy in Asia, and that is worth fighting for.
From the martyrs of the national revolution against the Qing Dynasty to the formation of the Republic of China, and the victory of Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Red Army, the century-old quest has been founded on the principle of the betterment of the Chinese people; inseparable from the improvement of the people’s livelihood are liberty and democracy.
The triumph of the communists was secured by the faith of the Chinese people toward an alternative to the corrupt Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT); with their victory, China swapped one dictatorship for another.
For all the talk of liberation and freedom under communism, the communists have failed in all respects in building Utopia. Even if we grant China the benefit by calling them state-capitalists, the Leninist elements of the government persist.
The CCP will do everything it takes to destroy order in Hong Kong, the thought that a democratic alternative can work in mainland China will only throw the entire narrative of the party into doubt.
Taiwan alone serves as a threat to that narrative, but the Taiwan Strait has enabled enough distance to separate the two Chinas.
Hong Kong, on the contrary, has become a blight to the communist’s party line, and all that Beijing wants now is further chaos to ensue.
And when chaos turns to the antebellum of civil war, the tanks will roll in — and will never leave.
Hong Kong will be the graveyard of the CCP. The party was born of the youthful spirit of the May 4th Movement, sparking a new left-wing energy to Chinese intelligentsia.
The concepts of a stronger civil society and a resilient democracy were the seeds of radicalism in the Chinese youth. Hong Kong now embodies that same spirit, and is fighting for its preservation.
When the tanks roll in and blood begins flowing through the streets, the CCP will have killed everything it once was.
Nigel Li
Singapore
Some restrictions needed
The July 21 edition of the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that three years after the Ministry of Education relaxed uniform and dress codes for senior high schools students, it is about to do the same for junior high schools. [Editor’s note: The Taipei Times also ran the story (“High school allows boys to wear skirts to class,” July 23, page 1).]
As the father of a first-grader at junior-high school, I was very surprised to read this report, because my son only recently made the transition from elementary school, where children do not have to wear uniforms.
My job and its associated duties do not cause me to be against relaxing dress codes. Actually, I really dislike school dress-code rules, precisely because I used to be the head of the life guidance office at a combined junior and senior-high school, where I was responsible for managing the dress and behavior of students in all grades.
The question, though, is whether scrapping dress codes will mean that junior-high school students can wear whatever they want. That would be another cause for worry.
When my eldest son was in elementary school, he only had to wear sports clothes two days a week. On the other three days, he could wear ordinary clothes.
Starting in fifth grade, he suddenly started growing taller and stockier. In quite a short time, he grew to more than 160cm and more than 60kg.
During that period, students at his school often compared their clothes and shoes, leaving my son unsure about what he should do. His shoes were pretty good and his clothes, pants and cap were not bad either. Some of them were even name brands.
However, his classmates had better clothes and shoes than he did, and he worried about it a lot.
I am quite in favor of relaxing dress codes in junior-high schools, but I think it would be better not to allow junior-high school students to wear casual clothes.
It would be all right to let a whole class wear casual clothes once in a while as a reward for doing well, but if they are allowed to wear casual clothes every day, for students who are going through adolescence, that could be an unforeseeable disaster.
The problem is that junior-high schoolers, being young and hot-blooded, have a habit of comparing themselves with one another.
If one student wears name-brand clothes or shoes, the others will all want to wear famous brands as well.
That would be a financial burden for some parents and put many students under invisible pressure.
Chen Hung-hu
New Taipei City
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