Patriotic education will never work on free-thinking Hong Kong youth, no matter what Carrie Lam and Annie Wu think

Using education to enforce patriotism may work on the mainland, where outside information is already tightly controlled. But Hongkongers such as Lam and Wu should know that it’s a different matter in an open society

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Annie Wu, daughter of Maxim’s founder, has insisted that the root of Hong Kong’s unrest is the failure to instill patriotism in Hong Kong’s youth. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 9:00am, 12 Dec 2019Updated: 9:00am, 12 Dec 2019

There’s this myth that government-imposed patriotic education right after reunification would have prevented the rise of young black-clad protesters fighting to defend their freedoms. A strong believer of this myth is Annie Wu Suk-ching, daughter of Maxim’s founder, who told mainland media that education officials and even parents had failed in promoting national pride.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is a believer too. Just last week she said young people need to be schooled in national identity. Let’s smash this myth in the same way 1.6 million Hong Kong voters and mass protest marches smashed the myth the silent majority opposes the protest movement.

Enforced patriotic education can only produce patriots in societies which limit free thinking. It works on the mainland, where a censored internet blocks access to everything the Communist Party doesn’t want the people to know.

Young mainlanders know nothing about the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. State media didn’t report the thrashing of pro-government parties in the district council elections. Even Winnie the Pooh is banned after netizens joked President Xi Jinping walked like the cartoon character. Brainwashing is easy when the free flow of information is restricted. Everyone is drilled to love the party with Xi at the core.

Doesn’t Wu know the phrase “loving the party with Xi at the core” is as alien to Hongkongers as green men from Mars? It’s not the lack of national education or identity that produced young Hongkongers willing to risk jail by hurling petrol bombs. It’s the failure of people like Lam and Wu, both Hongkongers themselves, to understand what drove the young to do it.

Hongkongers are born into an open society. Mainlanders are not. Young Hongkongers have a real fear that the open society they were born into is being closed by a motherland that has become increasingly authoritarian.