The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has introduced yet more new measures to reinforce patriotic education for young people in Hong Kong. The first measure requires Hong Kong’s junior-secondary students to visit China at least once, with the CCP providing 21 patriotic itineraries of two to five days for schools to choose from. The trips, mainly to cities in Guangdong Province, as well as some places in Fujian, Hunan and Guizhou provinces, and Macau, are fully subsidized by the Chinese government.
Each itinerary has two to four learning objectives. Aside from increasing their knowledge about China, many of the objectives are related to identity and national security. To wrap up the trips, teachers are required to “guide” students to “strengthen and reflect on what they have learned that day.” Nearly half of the itineraries include exchanges between Hong Kong students and mainland Chinese high-school or university students, and some even include “special lectures.”
The second measure is to establish a patriotic education support center to strengthen patriotic education. In a speech at the Hong Kong Patriotic Education Summit Forum on July 16, Chinese Deputy Minister of Education Tian Xuejun (田學軍) said that “assessment and evaluation are important tools” for patriotic education, sparking public concern. Although Hong Kong Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin (蔡若蓮) later said that “patriotism is an emotion that cannot be measured through assessments,” it revealed the CCP’s intent to brainwash students.
These measures are very similar to the “patriotic trips” and exchanges arranged by China for Taiwanese youth to enhance the “cohesiveness of the motherland.”
For research purposes, I once interviewed a number of young Taiwanese who had participated in what is commonly known as “united front group tours.”
I found that the young Chinese participants themselves did not engage in “united front” behavior during the activities, and the students were, for the most part, left to communicate with each other as part of the exchange experience. This could be beneficial in increasing mutual understanding and resolving differences. However, I also found that the political undertone of the activities and the Chinese activity leaders put Taiwanese participants off and might have actually increased their antipathy toward China.
For example, Taiwanese participants were required to watch Chinese patriotic movies — such as Wolf Warrior (戰狼), The Battle at Lake Changjin (長津湖) and Amazing China (厲害了我的國) — and afterward required to submit film reviews that met specific content requirements, or risk being rejected. Alternatively, Taiwanese participants could simply copy writing samples provided by the activity’s organizer.
The organizer’s press release was even found to have falsified opinions expressed by Taiwanese participants. There have also been cases where Taiwanese participants were taken aside and questioned for expressing a “different” opinion, which undermines the objective of the exchanges of building friendship between young people.
Patriotism comes from the heart and is a sincere expression of a natural disposition that cannot be measured through evaluations and examinations. Patriotism is an outcome of years of development, and cannot be achieved overnight.
Unsubtle, top-down “spoon-fed” education, where people are forced to learn what the ruling party wants them to learn, will only cultivate a superficial, slogan-based patriotism.
It is doubtful whether choreographed patriotic trips would be able to increase “cohesion,” especially as the trips must be “guided” by teachers at the end of the day, to “strengthen and reflect on what students have learned.” The rigid formalism might push Hong Kong youth even further away from the mainland, in the same way that the CCP’s youth work with Taiwan has only driven Taiwanese further away from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) stated goal of a “spiritual bonding” with China.
Huang Rui-guang is a doctor of law.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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