Caught Between Hong Kong’s Two Systems

By Tianyang Chen

In an article published in the New York Times on March 10, 2013, the author focuses on the education of Hong Kong’s minority groups in order to discuss the dilemma they are facing. This problem is stemming from changes in the city’s education system after Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, has struggled with how to deal with its ethnic minorities after it returned to mainland China in 1997. After the handover, Hong Kong implemented its “mother-tongue teaching policy”, in which more than 300 secondary schools switched from teaching in English to teaching in Chinese. Of the remaining 144 secondary schools allowed to continue teaching in English, the majority are very expensive private schools or elite schools that are extremely difficult for normal families to enter. The available positions for normal minority children are very limited.

Under such schooling circumstances, the designated schoolswere created to help those who fell in between ethnic Chinese students and those students who can afford the expensive private or elite schools. Currently, there are more than 30,000 ethnic minority students in Hong Kong, from kindergarten to the university level. Of the 15,000 enrolled in primary or secondary schools, more than half are at designated schools.

Talwinder Singh is a 17-year old “Hong Kong citizen” and a native son of this city, though he is an Indian passport holder. He had mixed feelings about the education system, introduced in 2006 to provide a separate space for non-Chinese minorities. “I’m glad I am studying at a designated school,” he said. “I know I will feel alone, and uncomfortable, if I studied in a mainstream school.” He regrets not having the chance to improve his Chinese and integrate more fully into Hong Kong society. He also expressed his feeling about the government shouldn’t separate both local Chinese and ethnic minorities and they should be under on school system.

 

Talwinder Singh, a 17-year-old at a school for students from ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, regrets not having had the chance to improve his Chinese and integrate more fully into Hong Kong society.

Tahir Nadeem Khan, an English teacher and head of community relations at Islamic Kasim Tuet Memorial College, a designated school, said: “The move was too sudden. The teachers were not well-equipped to teach these minority children. Many minority students suffered from the policy change.”

Fermi Wong, executive director of Hong Kong Unison, a nongovernmental organization that helps minority groups, said: “It is racial segregation. Students study in narrow social circles, and they are largely disconnected from the society.” She also mentioned about the negative effects on life after graduation for those ethnic minorities, since their inability to learn the language not only affects their education opportunities, but also their employment.

Club Thapa, whose Nepalese grandfather served in the British Army in Hong Kong, said: “Hong Kong is my home. It is sad because Hong Kong is losing a lot of talented people because of the current education policy. And these are the children of Hong Kong, the children whose fathers and grandfathers built and protected this city.”

In my opinion, education in the post-colonial era of a former colony can be very complex, especially in terms of representing a mother country’s sovereignty — language. In Hong Kong’s case, before the handover to mainland China, its official language was English, which was the result of British colonization. However, after the handover in 1997, mainland government was not satisfied with merely regaining Hong Kong in a physical way, but also planned to mentally assimilate it and make it a true part of the body of the mainland. And the most fundamental and effective way they formulated was by changing the education system. In this case, Hong Kong’s mainstream schools, which are the machines that produce the next generation of Hong Kong citizens, are forced to switch from being taught in English to Chinese under the new education policy about teaching language of the mainland government. Moreover, Hong Kong students leaving the sixth grade have to apply to get into secondary school the next year based on exam scores, including one on Chinese language ability. This mandatory education policy makes learning Chinese inevitable for all children in Hong Kong, including those ethnic non-Chinese.

Although Chinese cannot replace English in Hong Kong in the short term, its deep-to-root effect may be reflected in the long term, since “assimilation through education” definitely takes time (Bennett, 1995). However, the “victims” of such educational change are mainly those children who have to “change the car in the middle of the way”. Most of the minority students, who have gotten used to the previous English teaching environment and thus know little Chinese because they are not required to may have no choice but to go to designated schools, where they are actually “segregated” from the future mainstream of Hong Kong society, making it harder to be competitive after leaving school to enter the society.

References 

Bennett, C. I. (1995). Comprehensive multicultural education. Allyn and Bacon.

Calvin, Y. (March 10, 2013). Caught Between Hong Kong’s Two Systems. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/world/asia/caught-between-hong-kongs-two-systems.html?_r=1&

Hong Kong 16 Years After Handover: A Striking Story of Identity Crisis and Anti-National Education

By Chi Nguyen

It has been sixteen years since Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty after over a century under British colonialism.  However, the residents still struggle with the perspectives of their own identification, questioning whether they define themselves as “Hongkongers” or Chinese. The complexities of Hong Kong’s identity crisis with patriotic, democratic, and educational conflicts are discussed thoroughly in a new piece published in The Atlantic by Sebastian Veg. The article starts with the initial expectations of Mainland China and her local advocates in Hong Kong, stating that by the time of handover, Hong Kong dwellers’ favor of their “motherland” identity would surely be strengthened, especially among younger generations who have not been greatly “poisoned” by the colonial education system. Surprisingly, 16 years later, not only has the number of people claiming identification with Hong Kong exclusively increased, but also this hostility to the mainland has mostly come from the young generations educated after the handover. Young, educated people have been the key players in various local reactions against central government policies, most recently the July 2013 march for democratic suffrage and the Summer 2012 protest against national education.

Protesters rallying for democracy on July 1, 2013 carry British-era Hong Kong flags and a banner: “Chinese Colonists Get Out!!” to demand democratic reforms (Photo: AFP. Source: South China Morning Post)

Protester march in Summer 2012 against implement national education in Hong Kong, claiming it amounts to Chinese patriotic “brainwashing (Photo: Anonymous. Source: CNN)

Explaining the reasons behind this identity crisis, the author puts forward two assumptions grounded on post-colonialism, which I find very convincing:

The end of the resistance to colonialism may have paradoxically weakened the feeling of cultural belonging to the Chinese nation. Simultaneously, a new resistance to Beijing’s fixation on patriotism emerged. Most importantly, however, the new generation may be growing more aware of a contradiction between patriotic and democratic values.

The legacy of one-hundred-years of colonialism in Hong Kong reflects the residents’ feeling of detachment with the Chinese mainland culture and the rising resistance to central control forces. The young generations, nurtured by the westernized idea of democracy and unrestrained independent thinking would not easily accept any mainland’s imposition on local legislation and education, even under the name of patriotism.

During the year of 2012, this conflict hit a new tension level with the introduction of national education (a.k.a. moral and national education), a controversial policy of the Chinese government to implement more “patriotic”, “nation-strengthened” subjects into Hong Kong elementary schools. From a theoretical perspective, I see this as a typical structural functionalist move, which mandates that the national curriculum of the schools stress national purposes than the local, individual ones. Moreover, it attempts to push education’s function as a tool for cultural assimilation and political socialization in order to harmonize the whole social system (China sovereignty). The national education, however, encountered rigorous protests among Hong Kong citizens, who claimed the program “amounts to “brainwashing” impressionable young minds with pro-mainland propaganda”.

While there was a storm of anti-national education protests throughout Hong Kong, including hunger strikes, the national education plan director, Wong Chi Man, still persisted: “All education is, to some extent, designed to brainwash” (CNN). The purpose of education in this particular case has been distorted within the multifaceted conflicts between the post-colonial independent region and its nation-state domination, between patriotic perspectives and democratic values, and between the two identity perceptions still in crisis.

Reforming schooling systems in a post-colonialism state is not an easy task – the Chinese government has already learned that lesson. Education is clearly neither a “one size fits all” thing nor a “quick fix” for existing social problems. It requires Beijing to take a more sensible, well-planned, and long-term process to gain the “national trust” from Hong Kong people step-by-step. But for now, looking forward to the 2016 deadline for national education commencement in Hong Kong, we – education devotees– may hold hopes for changes and anticipate breaking-through ideas of reconciliation from both sides of the tension.

References

Veg, S. (2013, Oct 16). Hong Kong’s enduring identity crisis. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/hong-kongs-enduring-identity-crisis/280622/

Branigan, T. (2013, July 1). Thousands march in Hong Kong to demand democratic reforms. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/01/thousands-march-hong-kong-democratic-reforms

Lai, A. (2012, July 30). ‘National education’ raises furor in Hong Kong. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/hong-kong-national-education-controversy/