Letters | Fighting race inequality in Hong Kong starts with schools, jobs and social biases

Having a Race Discrimination Ordinance and an Equal Opportunities Commission may have put us ahead of our Asian neighbours, but there is hardly room for complacency. To begin with, the Race Discrimination Ordinance is admittedly the weakest of the four anti-discrimination ordinances and needs strengthening. The exemption of government powers and functions from the Race Discrimination Ordinance’s provisions, for instance, has long been criticised both by the Equal Opportunities Commission and local NGOs. In fact, the EOC made recommendations to the government for amendments as early as March 2016, but most of our suggestions are yet to be considered.

The situation of our ethnic minority populations leaves much to be desired. The EOC is especially concerned about the future of our ethnic minority youth, many born and raised here, attending local schools and calling Hong Kong home.

An inefficient system of Chinese language learning with limited regard for second language learning pedagogy has led to a situation where, despite 12 years of schooling, they end up with poor Chinese reading and writing proficiency. This directly impacts their choices for tertiary education and eventually jobs. An EOC working group on education for ethnic minorities will submit its report by the end of this year and we hope the government will take its recommendations seriously.

A recent study carried out by the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute and funded by the EOC shows that it is not just Chinese language learning that is unsatisfactory, but also the learning of other subjects. Many ethnic minority students, especially in schools where Chinese serves as the primary medium of instruction, end up doing poorly in all subjects, which adversely affects their overall grades and future opportunities. It is no wonder that non-Chinese students made up only 1.4 per cent of total university enrolments in 2016-17.