Mainland-style Indoctrination for Hongkong schools

March forth under the banner of Mao!

Compatriots script textbook for patriotic study

The Hong Kong government gave HK$13 million taxpayer dollars to the Hong Kong Patriotic Education Services Centre (HKPESC) to produce a 34-page booklet titled ‘Chinese Model National Conditions Teaching Manual’ for Hong Kong schools. How this came to be without proper public consultation, professional vetting or Legislative Council debate, remains yet another mystery in HKSAR mis-governance.

The Donald Tsang administration allocated this annual fund to a hitherto unknown ‘patriotic education’ outfit created by the HK Federation of Education Workers (FEW) which represents 26,000 comrade teachers and is an integral part of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB).

These and many other bodies are hydra-headed expressions of ‘united front’ work co-ordinated and fuelled by the China Liaison Office. While exerting coercive influence on the HK government, the Communist Party remains largely invisible in the territory, working through ‘united front’ activity in schools, unions and Taoist religious organizations.

Parents and teachers call for mass protest

Parents, teachers and pupils have scheduled next Sunday July 29 to march to the government headquarters in Admiralty. Widespread public dismay over the contents of this ‘Chinese Model’ teaching manual caused the government to postpone full implementation of moral and patriotic education classes.

Instead, the booklet will be distributed to some primary schools this September while secondary schools will implement the ‘compulsory’ curriculum from 2015. Hong Kong society has three years to agree the boundary between education and propaganda.

The Catholic, Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran Church schools networks have rejected the ‘Chinese Model’ booklet as inappropriate. That removes one-third of primary schools in Hong Kong from the scheme this year.

Love the motherland. Love the Communist Party

Thirty-two pages of the ‘Chinese Model’ booklet extol the virtues of the mainland government under its one-party communist dictatorship. Perfunctory reference is made to recent incidents of concern like the tainted milk scandal, internet filtering software and the “My dad is Li Gang” case of the son of a Party official whose car knocked down a girl on campus. He fled the scene boasting of his powerful dad.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is described as “progressive, selfless and united” in contrast to the messy two-party conflicts of the USA and contentious multi-party European governments.

The horrors inflicted on the Chinese people through unchecked political monopoly power and callous disregard for human rights are not discussed in ‘Chinese Model’. The ten-year Cultural Revolution madness gets no mention. The June 4 1989 Tiananmen massacre of students is absent.

Education Secretary summoned to Beijing

The new Education Secretary, Eddie Ng Hak-kim, while bravely trying to justify patriotic education, could not bring himself to endorse the booklet. He worried that parts of it were biased and could lead to brainwashing.

Eddie Ng has reservations

Hardly a fortnight into his job, Secretary Eddie was summoned to Beijing on a secret trip which breached protocol and long-established procedure to inform the press. Eddie has been silent on the content of the Beijing meeting since his return.

The HK Professional Teachers Union (HKPTU) which represents the majority of teachers in the territory with a membership of 80,000 against the left-fringe FEW which has 26,000 members, rejects the patriotic education scheme. Its founding chairman was the late Szeto Wah, a respected human rights leader who came to prominence during the 1989 Tiananmen military action against students.

The HKPTU’s current chairman Fung Wai-wah called for the government to scrap the discredited ‘Chinese Model’ booklet and patriotic education course. “The government should not wait until students refuse to show up in class before it reviews the course”. The union is collecting signatures from teachers opposed to the biased patriotic education material and will lead the July 29 mass rally.

Patriots lie low for the moment

The uncharacteristic reticence on this loaded issue by otherwise vociferous pro-Beijing patriots in Hong Kong is because the Legislative Council elections are due in September. Hong Kong is still fresh from the huge turnout for the June 4 vigil and public outrage on July 1 against the suspicious death in custody of Tiananmen detainee Li Wangyang.

The DAB fears a backlash from Hong Kong’s fiercely non-conformist residents. If it fails to secure a two-thirds majority along with allies from the rotten boroughs of functional constituencies, it will be difficult to stall the demand to jettison functional constituency voting blocks for directly elected seats, or to pass the Article 23 Security Bill which Beijing needs to de-fang Hong Kong’s press and chill public dissent. Touted as a national security obligation, Article 23 is a thinly veiled internal suppression tool to align Hong Kong with mainland police state methods.

Hongkong pride in being Chinese drops

Hongkong University’s annual poll on the sense of pride in becoming Chinese citizens after 1997 dropped to its lowest level of just 37% of residents since 2001. That 63% of HK disavows China identity fifteen years after the handover must be worrisome for Beijing and its proxies in the territory. Hence the frenzy to instill love of the Party through indoctrination of vulnerable youth in schools.

Children are systematically schooled in regimentation
and love of the Communist Party 

 

‘National Little Vanguard’ teaches Mao worship

At the ‘City Forum’ weekend televised debate of July 15 on patriotic education, Yu Yee-wah, chairperson of the Education Employees General Union and the HK Primary Teachers Association of General Studies (both organs of FEW) smacked down 15-year old Jasper Wong Chi-fung, co-founder of a student group opposed to brainwashing. Her tantrum was captured on camera and distributed widely on YouTube.

Yu Yee-wah heads many bodies
brainwashing Hongkong schoolchildren

Young Jasper Wong says he is both a Chinese and Hongkong citizen and sees no problem with patriotism. “But patriotism should not be cultivated through a school subject which aims to brainwash students”. His student group would join the July 29 rally.

Netizens researching Ms Yu Yee-wah found to their astonishment that she was also vice-chair of the ‘National Little Vanguard’ which teaches schoolchildren to worship Chairman Mao’s calligraphic works and ‘relentless spirit’. Little Vanguards wear military uniforms, raise the national flag, sing red songs and march with rifles. After this discovery led to uproar in HK’s blogosphere, the Little Vanguard website was hastily removed.

Yu Yee-wah’s Facebook page displays photographs of herself in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and one-on-one photo with CY Leung, the territory’s current chief executive.

The last word on the progress of the Communist Party is best left to former mainland public security officer Ni Kuang, who likened it to the progress of a cannibal tribe upgrading to knives and forks to eat humans. "The essence hasn't changed. It becomes more absurd. And they are so proud of it."

Ni Kuang preferred scriptwriting to
death warrants for class enemies

Ni Kuang migrated to Hong Kong from China in 1957 after serving as a public security apparatchik in Inner Mongolia where his job was to write death sentences for class enemies and anyone else nominated by local party chiefs. He feared political persecution for his reluctance to co-operate in terminating people.


His career in Hong Kong blossomed as a science fiction writer and prolific scriptwriter for Shaw Brothers Studios from the 1960s through 1980s, famous for hits like One Armed Swordsman, The Blood Brothers, Flying Guillotine etc. His Fist of Fury launched the career of a young Bruce Lee. 


Ni Kuang was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the HK movie industry at its 31st Film Awards in April this year.


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New Mainland editor at SCMP chief censor for China?

Journalistic ethics questioned at SCMP
So why was Li Wangyang’s suicide not news?

“I don’t have to explain to you anything. I made the decision and I stand by it. If you don't like it, you know what to do". That was how SCMP's new Beijing editor Wang replied Alex Price, a sub-editor at the paper.

Wang Xiangwei
the new mandarin at SCMP

The ‘suicide’ of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang under suspicious circumstances in a Hunan hospital, was reported by the Post’s own China staff in its first edition. Editor Wang returned to the office between editions to reduce it to a ‘brief’ buried in the inside pages. Alex Price asked why? Now he fears for his job. Alex circulated the intimidating e-mail exchange to his colleagues in the newsroom and elsewhere.

Li Wangyang’s suicide came days after he spoke to a Hong Kong TV channel, recounting two decades of harsh imprisonment and torture which left his sight and hearing severely damaged. Hong Kong politicians, including York Chow, secretary for food and health, have questioned why a frail man who survived relentless torture for so long, would suddenly decide to hang himself - or even have the strength to do so.
Too many detainees in China's notoriously medieval political gulags have been 'suicided'. 


Many pro-Beijing comrades in Hong Kong have also uncharacteristically raised their voices asking for full investigation and disclosure. This is an election year in Hong Kong for expanded Legislative Council seats, due September 9.

Emotions in Hong Kong are running high on Beijing’s unrectified verdict on the Tiananmen students. The pro-Beijing parties fear there could be a backlash. There was a record turnout of 180,000 people for the June 4 anniversary vigil in Victoria Park. The march that erupted on June 10 after the suspicious suicide of Li Wangyang, vented more anger against the blatant disregard for human rights in China.

President Hu Jintau is due to visit Hong Kong on July 1 for the 15th anniversary of the handover. The minders at the Hong Kong & Macau Affairs Office and the China Liaison Office are nervous of demonstrations during that high-profile visit.

Xiangwei the final nail in SCMP coffin?

When Xiangwei, a Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) member, was appointed editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s 110-year paper of record, many industry professionals had misgivings. The more optimistic hoped that the independent journalistic traditions at the century-old paper would prevail over political correctness.

Wang Xiangwei was invited to articulate his intentions for the paper at Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club in April this year. The audience was none the wiser for his talk but Xiangwei pledged to uphold journalistic standards of reporting ‘without fear or favour’. The spin was predictable.

He did say that two months was too short a time to judge his editorship and asked his FCC audience to invite him back in six months. They should. He has a lot to answer for which is depressing for journalism at one of Asia’s long admired English language newspapers.

The sorry journalism at the Straits Times in Singapore, the discredited mainstream media in Malaysia and Burma and the woefully provincial press in Manila, all explain why the SCMP is such a relief to read. For how much longer?

The hiccups which SCMP has gone through with the serial termination of political cartoonists and China reporters continue to reverberate. Is Wang Xiangwei the final nail on the coffin? The spin-doctors at the China Liaison Office (HQ for ‘united front’ activities) could not have wished for a more effective liaison.

More insightful China analysis

It is generally acknowledged that the SCMP’s China news coverage, commentary and analysis is consistently superior to any international newspaper. Is that due to Xiangwei’s access to the inner networks of the PRC government, party and academics?

One comment on the whistle-blowing news site Asia Sentinel from a Wen Yiduo stated:
“Wang Xiangwei makes a zero contribution to the China section, aside from assigning meaningless and stupid stories. Anything good that appears in the China pages is due to the many knowledgeable reporters who cover China. If anything Wang Xiangwei censors news or gets in the way”.

As a CPPCC member at the national level, Xiangwei would not be considered a security risk. He is not categorized as a dissident or Westernized liberal. The bosses in Beijing are quite relaxed about their man in power at the SCMP. His instinct on sensitive issues is ‘reliable’ as the Li Wangyang incident has shown.

After the other Hong Kong papers covered Li Wangyang’s suicide comprehensively, the SCMP joined the queue with strong features, editorials and commentary. Xiangwei obviously looks over his shoulder for cues before treading on sensitive issues.

Editor-in-Chief needs to be a leader too

What is emerging from the SCMP newsroom is that Wang Xiangwei lacks people skills, organizational ability and respect for time. He has been known to confirm appointments with his subordinates which then drift by for hours or days. He is dismissive of subordinates who query his edicts. He does not share his vision for the paper or articulate any clear editorial philosophy for his journalists. His news conference style is not participative.

Like a mandarin in office, he is imperious and aloof. In a creative environment of writers and analysts, that does not sit well. The lack of inspirational leadership in the newsroom is a damper for most who looked forward to the change from its last Singaporean editor-in-chief who served management in gutting the senior echelon.

More Beijing talent from Xiangwei’s network is being appointed to senior positions and Western journalists are feeling unwelcome.

The Malaysian trio who were brought in earlier have departed for a new era of Singaporean chiefs following the appointment of former Singapore foreign minister George Yeo as vice-chairman of Kerry Group (a unit of Kuok Group) from January this year. Kerry Group has a controlling interest in the SCMP.

Replacing western journalists and introducing security department officials into supervisory positions at the Straits Times is well known throughout the industry. The South China Morning Post will have the dubious benefit of this media muzzling expertise from its new advisers.
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