National education is vital for all students in today’s politically charged Hong Kong

Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, recently told students here categorically: “Hong Kong is a great society. It is not a nation state.” He mentioned the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984, noting that it included a paragraph on China’s national unity and territorial integrity, and bluntly said that independence advocates were deceiving themselves and hurting the cause of democracy. It goes without saying that Patten respects China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.

For most Hong Kong residents, the change to Chinese citizenship happened overnight on July 1, 1997. Unlike other colonies, Hong Kong did not go through a process of decolonisation and national consciousness building. The older generations of Hongkongers accepted Chinese citizenship naturally. The younger generations, especially those born after the handover, did not have the chance to witness the Sino-British negotiations and the Basic Law consultation and formulation, as well as the transformation of China under the reform and opening up policy.

Our students must learn about city’s constitutional set-up

They grew up receiving a lot of negative news about corruption, human rights abuses, the lack of rule of law and other problems on the mainland. The apparent lack of progress on Hong Kong’s democratic development led to the so-called Umbrella Movement in 2014. The street protests drew many young people further away from recognising their Chinese national identity.

It has become very clear that advocacy for Hong Kong independence, self-determination, or separation from China has done and will do serious harm to the maintenance of “one country, two systems” and threatens the well-being of Hong Kong. Taking administrative or legal action against independence advocates may be necessary as a deterrent, but it is largely inadequate in educating the younger generations on why the ideas supporting Hong Kong independence are “wrong” (Patten’s word), besides being totally impractical.

Localists should fight to protect Hong Kong’s autonomy, not seek independence

The best solution is for the Hong Kong government, the education sector and the whole community to enforce a civic education curriculum to cultivate a national identity and promote understanding among students of the rights and duties of citizenship (students of non-Chinese nationalities would be educated to respect and appreciate Chinese culture).

In countries throughout the world, civic education includes lessons on national identity. In Western democracies, the main aim of civic education is to build a common national identity based on the values of a free and democratic society. Singapore’s civic education curriculum, which was launched in 1991, teaches the principles of Singapore’s national ideology, while mainland China introduced the subject in 2001.