Government pressured Hong Kong exam authority to scrap controversial Japan-China question, student’s lawyers argue
- The question, which asked if Japan did China ‘more good than harm’ in the first half of the 1900s, was invalidated after a rare Education Bureau intervention
- Lawyers argued that public comments from the bureau and city leader amounted to deliberate threats that were ‘palpably heard and felt’
Lawyers for a Hong Kong student challenging the scrapping of a history exam question that asked if “Japan did more good than harm to China” in the first half of the 20th century have accused the government of “threatening” the assessment authority into making its decision, a court heard on Thursday.
The question from the university entrance exam, sat by some 4,900 candidates in May, drew immediate outrage from Beijing and pro-establishment figures in Hong Kong when it became known to the public on the day of the exam.
It was scrapped after the Education Bureau (EDB) made an unprecedented request for the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) to invalidate the question, which it said had “hurt Chinese people’s feelings”. The city’s leader, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, meanwhile, said the body had made “a professional error”, one in which she could intervene.
Among those affected was judicial review applicant Loh Ming-yin, who complained of being prejudiced by the HKEAA’s decision, because he had spent considerable time answering the compulsory question during his Diploma of Secondary Education exam.
It was never necessary for the EDB to resort to such a high-profile, high-handed tactic to make a point,” she said. “The [chief executive] was not qualified to make that statement
At the High Court on Thursday, his counsel, Po Wing-kay, argued the HKEAA’s May 22 decision should be quashed because it took irrelevant factors into account, departed from the established process, and neglected academic freedom.