Savour national education victory
Stephen Vines celebrates the remarkable opposition to national education
Hong Kong people have a remarkable capacity for not recognising a victory when it stares them in the face. Even though I understand why many of those who campaigned for scrapping the national education curriculum remain sceptical over the government's sincerity, this thing is dead in its tracks. All the face-saving words from Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying do not alter that fact.
Meanwhile, if anything that Leung said on this matter can be believed, he should take comfort from the fact that the anti-national education campaign resulted in a massive increase in civic awareness and concern about society. This is supposed to be the objective of national education and I have never seen it achieved in such a short time with such conclusive results.
It may well be that the real intention of the national education programme was to inculcate the values of the Chinese Communist Party into the minds of Hong Kong's youth. But this was never its stated purpose, so we should at least treat this issue on the basis of its stated objectives.
In footballing terms, the government's retreat produces a score of: Hong Kong People 2, Hong Kong Government 0 (following own goals by Captains Tung Chee-hwa and Leung). The first defeat follows the backtracking on the pernicious anti-subversion legislation almost a decade ago.
Both people's victories go to the very heart of Hong Kong's determination to force the mainland government to honour the pledge of "one country, two systems". There is something remarkable about the clarity of vision shown by the majority in their determination to preserve Hong Kong's way of life and freedoms.
This should not be confused, as it has been deliberately confused, with a lack of Chinese patriotism or, even more absurdly, with nostalgia for British colonialism. Anyone who bothered to talk to the people most actively engaged in these protests will know that, far from lacking Chinese patriotism, they are full of pride in their Chinese identity,but are equally resolute in their determination not to have it sullied by exclusive identification with a political system that they reject.
What the proponents of both the national education system and the Article 23 anti-subversion laws revealed was an inability to understand how smart Hong Kong people are.