Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen emphasised the need for more 'national education' - a better understanding of the country's development and sense of its national and cultural identity - during his policy address last week.
For that reason, he said, 'we will attach great importance to promoting national education among our young people, so that they grow to love our motherland and Hong Kong ... and have a strong sense of pride as nationals of the People's Republic of China'.
Mr Tsang seemed to be making great strides in his own 'national education'. Just as Beijing built 10 major projects to mark the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, so Mr Tsang unveiled 10 major building projects to mark the 10th anniversary of the handover.
In June, President Hu Jintao issued his 'four insists' policy, calling for liberal thinking, scientific development, social harmony and a moderately well-off society.
Mr Tsang, ever the diligent student, came up with his own list of 'three insists', calling for economic development that is sustainable and balanced, and promotes social harmony.
But his national education was far from complete - as he showed during an RTHK interview on Friday in which he likened the Cultural Revolution to an extreme form of democracy. He called China's decade of turmoil an example of 'people taking power into their own hands'. And, he said, 'if we go to [such an] extreme ... then you cannot govern'.
Mr Tsang has since apologised for those comments, but it's interesting to speculate why he used the analogy in the first place. Perhaps he thought he was toeing the party line by comparing democracy to that era. After all, Zou Zhekai, then a deputy director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, likened the peaceful protest by half a million Hongkongers on July 1, 2003, to the Cultural Revolution.