Sin-ming Shaw's commentary 'Back to a culture of subservience,' (Sunday Morning Post, August 27) painted Confucian values of 'authority, obedience and stability', as the darkest threat to academic freedom and yearnings for democracy in Hong Kong. Tung Chee-hwa, he said, was anti-democratic and favoured a return to an orderly Confucian past.
Denouncing Mr Tung and Confucius in the same breath harks back to one of the most bizarre episodes of the Cultural Revolution 30 years ago. The campaign, 'Criticise Lin, criticise Confucius' was launched after Lin Biao, designated heir to Mao Zedong, died mysteriously in a plane crash in Mongolia. Lin, according to the propagandists of that time, was a closet Confucian who had fooled the wise leader and the whole Chinese people.
Dr Robert Chung Ting-yiu's complaint about feeling pressure over his conducting of opinion polls opened a Pandora's box and the debate quickly strayed from the original concerns about academic freedom. Many parties have latched on to the controversy to make a platform for their agenda. That is entirely normal in a democratic society. The quality of the debate, I venture to say, is a reflection of the society and the culture.
Disquietingly, the unfolding saga is scripted like the Cultural Revolution.
'Who is the Black Hand?' cries out a poster. A press picture shows a sinister-looking black rubber glove dangling on the wrought-iron gate. University officials are judged a priori guilty of persecuting a populist hero pollster by the simple fact they are in a position of authority. The 'feudal values' Mr Shaw so deplores are perhaps rooted more in the British colonial rule than in a Confucian tradition. Hong Kong people never chose to be colonial subjects, but many have adapted well without questioning the fundamental inequity of the system.
Confucius is a great educator of all ages - an honour even Unesco - the United Nations' Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation - is happy to endorse. Ironically, the master's influence in an institution of higher learning is viewed as undermining liberal democracy, without which academic freedom is nearly impossible. The Old Sage, who never held any significant office in his life, was subservient to no one.