Opinion | Are Beijing loyalists really ready for modern Chinese history to be taught to all Hong Kong students?

Gary Cheung says a new curriculum will give local secondary pupils the chance to study a number of ‘inconvenient truths’ about the nation’s post-1949 history

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A poster showing Chairman Mao Zedong is displayed in downtown Beijing in February 1967, towards the tail-end of Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. Hong Kong students may learn more in their new history classes than our pro-Beijing lawmakers bargained for. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:20pm, 28 Nov 2016Updated: 8:36pm, 28 Nov 2016

Two weeks ago, a motion requiring Chinese history be taught as an independent and compulsory subject at junior secondary level was passed in the Legislative Council with strong backing from the pro-establishment camp.

The lawmakers believe that the rise of separatist thought among young people in Hong Kong has to do with their shallow understanding of Chinese history. Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, for one, attributed the behaviour of two localists at the centre of the Legco oath fracas to the rise of a “rootless” generation – all because Chinese history was not properly taught.

Perspective key to teaching our children Chinese history

Just a week earlier, at a press conference held to announce Beijing’s latest interpretation, Basic Law Committee chairman Li Fei spent seven minutes explaining why he found the conduct of Youngspiration’s Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching deplorable. Brandishing a copy of the Chinese edition of A History of Hong Kong, written by historian Frank Welsh, Li quoted parts in the book detailing the atrocities the Japanese army perpetrated during its occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945.

Plover Cove Reservoir in Tai Po district, New Territories. In a leaked letter, Youngspiration’s Yau Wai-ching argues that the Sino-British Joint Declaration should have dealt only with the sovereignty of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, but not the New Territories. Photo: Jeannette Wang

Revised history curriculum focuses more on Hong Kong but omits important elements of the past

I don’t doubt that the two disqualified lawmakers are quite ignorant about Chinese history. A letter that Yau drafted but never sent, calling for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to express concern over the sovereignty of the New Territories, is further proof of their appalling ignorance of Chinese history. In the leaked letter, she argued, incredibly, that the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration should have dealt only with the sovereignty of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.

Even so, Beijing-friendly politicians and mainland officials who spare no effort in pushing young people to learn more about Chinese history should be careful what they wish for.

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