LettersHong Kong DSE history exam: Japanese invasion of China is no subject for a cost-benefit analysis

The carnage wrought on Chinese soil, including in Hong Kong, during the Japanese occupation should not be so easily dismissed

Asking if more good than harm came out a period including the Japanese invasion risks normalising war crimes

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Students in Hong Kong write a DSE paper on April 27, after the university entrance exams were delayed by more than a month by a coronavirus outbreak. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:55am, 20 May 2020Updated: 10:48am, 21 May 2020

Not long ago, many people were astonished at how a Hong Kong primary schoolteacher falsely told students that the British waged war with China in the 1840s to “ban opium smoking in China”. In the Diploma of Secondary Education history exam last week, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) hit a new low by setting a question requiring students to assess whether Japan did more good than harm to China during 1900-1945.

The Japanese invasion, and subsequent occupation of Hong Kong for three years and eight months, wrought tremendous carnage and devastation in China. Even if some people hate to identify themselves as Chinese, how could anyone who truly loves Hong Kong rub salt into the wound?

What the Japanese invasion meant to the Chinese people is tantamount to what Nazism meant for the West. It is unimaginable that a similarly provocative question about Nazism could possibly appear in a Western public exam paper.

Some people argue that students could rebut the exam question. But not everything is suitable for a cost-benefit analysis. By forcing students to compare the “good” and “harm” of a period including the Japanese invasion, the HKEAA effectively insinuates that war crimes might be tolerable, provided that the war criminals had done enough “good” to offset the “harm”.

Following this logic, our condemnation of war crimes would become less natural and unconditional, and more calculative, taking into account the “good” done by war criminals. To borrow Michael Sandel’s words, in his analysis of the impact of market values, such logic leaves “their mark on social norms”; whatever conclusions one may reach in the end, the mere act of comparison already “corrupts” our moral norms and “taints” our respect for human life and dignity.