No surprise if Hong Kong youth don’t want to cross the border for study or work

Bethany Lee need not bother to find excuses for Hong Kong youngsters’ disinterest in seeking a career or in studying in the Greater Bay Area (“Familiarity with mainland best for youngsters” February 1), for we are the same “follow the winner” breed as those that Deng Xiaoping sent to study abroad, of whom only a fraction returned to serve the country. Deng was not surprised.

What else can we expect of these same people who produced football fans without principle and without allegiance, to the extent of booing the national anthem played before the international match in 2015 in Mong Kok; or even before that, in 2012, the Olympics fans in the bar rooms who cheered each time Japan or Britain won but booed each time China won.

They are not like the decent and principled Hong Kong rugby players who sang the national anthem with such obvious feeling (“Hong Kong rugby team’s rendition of China national anthem sparks debate”, January 20).

But then we Chinese are not alone. The Japanese, who are so nationalistic as to have produced the kamikaze pilots in the second world war, had earlier emigrated in droves to the US and Latin America, for life was so unbearably hard in the overcrowded home country. Nevertheless, they were not trusted by the US and were rounded up and interned in camps.

That said, the home affairs people could have done a lot more to woo the youngsters. Besides, the Cantonese dialect that Hongkongers had been encouraged by the previous colonial government to speak has accentuated the difference between Hongkongers and mainlanders.

Peter Lok, Heng Fa Chuen