‘Hate speech’ student video directed at new mainland Chinese arrivals at Hong Kong university condemned by school heads
- Two-minute clip, a parody of official welcome video, describes HKU as the ‘University of Xiang Gang’ and attacks mainland students
- Video also touches on the sacking of law scholar Benny Tai from his tenured post as an associate professor in July
The heads of Hong Kong’s leading university have condemned an “offensive and insensitive” video clip made by its students, saying it contained hate speech and hurtful content directed at mainland Chinese peers on campus and demanded an apology from the producer.
The two-minute film, a parody of the University of Hong Kong’s official welcome video for new students, described HKU as the “University of Xiang Gang” – the romanised Mandarin name for the city – and included negative characterisations of mainland students.
The video made by student group Campus TV and posted on Facebook also touched on the sacking of law scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting from his tenured post as an associate professor in July over convictions related to the 2014 Occupy protests, saying the decision, without naming the academic, was “based on political interests”.
Captions on the video included, “XGU [Xiang Gang University] welcomes a new cohort of mainland students & spies of the Big Brother” and “Whatever you choose to study, XGU closes doors to institutional autonomy and academic freedom”.
It also included news footage of an elite mainland student who won a scholarship from HKU this year, with the words: “We are especially proud to have a Gaokao arts top scorer achieving B+ in history by spending over a million dollars.”
The Jiangsu province student, who scored top marks in China’s Gaokao university entrance exams, did not meet the requirements for Tsinghua or Peking universities because of a B+ in history. She was admitted to HKU on a scholarship of more than HK$684,000 for a four-year programme.
In a statement on Wednesday, HKU said senior management had issued a message to the chairman of Campus TV – part of the student union – expressing distress over the video while noting the depictions “discriminate against these students solely because of their place of origin”.