My TakeEducation Bureau is right to invalidate biased exam question

Would you agree that Japan “did more good than harm to China” between 1900 and 1945? That was the controversial question in a mandatory paper in the history section for the Diploma of Secondary Education, an exam for university admissions.

The Education Bureau has, rightly, demanded its invalidation. But you can always count on the anti-government and opposition groups to fight anything China-related. So, Demosisto, the Academic Staff Association of The Education University of Hong Kong, Progressive Teachers’ Alliance and any number of student groups have launched a campaign and threatened a judicial review if the invalidation goes ahead.

It is “political interference”, they say. Well, anything the government does is interference. Handing out HK$10,000 to everyone in Hong Kong is economic interference.

Suppose a DSE examiner asked whether the Tiananmen Square massacre made possible China’s economic miracle. I bet those same groups, and more, would be jumping up and down, demanding the examiner be disciplined or sacked, and the question cancelled. It would make international news.

But exiled human rights lawyer Teng Biao certainly thought so, among others. He has convincingly argued that engineering China’s economic success was a matter of survival and the basis of political legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party. Such conclusions are reached not just by knowing the historical facts, but by making mature moral and intellectual judgment.

Should we expect DSE students to hit this level of academic inquiry in two hours and be graded for it?

A local academic quoted Mao Zedong, who publicly expressed gratitude to the Japanese on several occasions for enabling the communist victory. He also argued that they developed the industrial capacity in Manchuria (northeast China) that subsequently helped the communists industrialise.