British army-linked cadets active in Hong Kong amid debate over new PLA-backed force
Group that claimed to provide 'military training' still active amid debate over PLA-backed troop
A cadet force with links to the British army – which in 2011 claimed to offer “proper military training" – remains active in Hong Kong amid heated debate over the recent launch of a similar organisation backed by the People’s Liberation Army.
A week after a host of top city officials and PLA top brass attended what has been described as a “secretive” ceremony to inaugurate the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association, new details have emerged of a quasi-military youth group which as recently as 2013 was “inspected” by a defence attache from the British Embassy in Beijing.
The continued existence of the group - which was first publicised by the South China Morning Post in 2011 – looks set to reignite the debate over Sunday’s controversial inauguration of the new cadet force at the PLA’s facility at Stonecutter’s Island.
It comes as the city grapples with identity issues 17 years after China regained sovereignty from Britain in 1997 ending 156 years of colonial rule. Tiny fringe groups advocating “Hong Kong nationalism” who wave the former colonial British flag have been heavily criticised by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying
Attempts to contact those behind the organisation, which was founded in 2001 as the Sandhurst Discipline Training Company (SDTC) by former British army soldier Danny Ng Yau-ming, were unsuccessful. Their website carries no contact numbers, emails went unanswered and at an address linked to the group no one knew them.
However, the group has changed its original name, taken from Britain’s top military training facility, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and is now called the Hong Kong Army Cadets, strikingly similar to that of the newly formed PLA cadet force.