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The Liberty Times
Editorial: China’s influence must be blocked
Over the past couple of weeks, university and college students in Hong Kong have
launched a series of strikes aimed at forcing the government of Chief Executive
Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) to withdraw its order to implement a “moral and national
education” curriculum in primary and secondary schools, and for the time being
there is no indication that the students are going to drop their campaign.
Hong Kong is a juicy morsel in China’s mouth. Originally, the Beijing government
thought that, having retrieved this choice cut from its former British colonial
rulers, it could just sit back and enjoy the meal.
China’s leaders probably never imagined that, 15 years later, they would still
not have managed to swallow it, or that they would find the meat to be full of
prickly little bones that stick in the throat. In Hong Kong, the “China model”
has run up against serious obstacles.
The current wave of controversy in Hong Kong, which is officially a Special
Administrative Region of China, can be traced back to May. That is when the Hong
Kong government, acting on instructions from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤),
set in motion a plan to introduce “national education” into the school
curriculum this month, the start of the new academic year.
Much to the government’s consternation, after the content of a 30-odd-page China
Model National Conditions Teaching Manual was made public, it caused an uproar
among parents, students and teachers, and the row is still going on.
The controversial passages in the teaching guide contain the following points:
It says that China follows a people-based ideology and has implemented socialist
democracy, and that this system has four main democratic structures.
It says that the “Chinese model” is an ideal system that takes the people as its
foundation.
It claims that Chinese government officials are selected according to their
performance and evaluations, and that this merit-based system of appointing
officials, inherited from the imperial civil service examination system, has
produced an advanced, selfless and united ruling group that ensures stable
governance.
The handbook contrasts this system with the multiparty kind of democracy
practiced in Europe and the US, which it says involves destructive rivalry
between two main parties while the public suffers the consequences.
The Hong Kong public reacted by denouncing the proposed curriculum as
“brainwashing.” Leung has since canceled the three-year limit for implementing
the curriculum and said that moral and national education will not be introduced
as a school subject for five years. Elections for Hong Kong’s parliament, the
Legislative Council, are also over — but the student protest movement continues,
as people demand that the curriculum be withdrawn altogether.
Students in Hong Kong refuse to be brainwashed. From the descriptions of the
“China model” quoted above, it can clearly be seen that they are saying “no” to
being forced to study bogus notions.
Hong Kong was ruled by Britain for a long time, so the public has a good
understanding of how party politics works. For Hong Kongers, accepting China’s
definition of Western democracy would be no more sensible than asking a eunuch
for advice about sex.
This is by no means the only bogus notion that has been foisted on Hong Kong.
Former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) had promised that Hong Kong
would be run on a “one country, two systems” model and that this system would
remain unchanged for 50 years.
However, although less than a third of that time has passed, everything is
changing in Hong Kong. As the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress
approaches, Hu wants to use “national education” to promote “one country, one
system” for Hong Kong.
He wants Hong Kong to accept the Chinese version of democracy, in which all
power is concentrated in the hands of one party. This is actually the biggest
hoax of all, and it completely subverts the principles laid down in Hong Kong’s
Basic Law.
Living as they do under the eaves of “one China,” it can be foreseen that the
Hong Kong public’s efforts to maintain a different system from the rest of China
will be fraught with difficulties.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is a sovereign state, but ironically, its current
leaders keep doing everything they can to put the “one China” hat on their own
heads.
Many Taiwanese feel that the policies that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九)
government has been implementing one by one are making him look more like a Hong
Kong-style chief executive than a proper head of state.
Take, for example, two recent issues that are both related to Hong Kong.
Last month, when a boat carrying protesters from Hong Kong set out to make a
landing on the disputed Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), the Taiwanese government
dispatched coast guard vessels to supply the protesters with extra food, water
and fuel, and when the Japan Coast Guard detained 14 of the protesters, Taiwan’s
National Security Council convened a meeting and strongly demanded that the
Japanese authorities set them free.
Now, however, as tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong take to the streets to
resist brainwashing, Ma, who is a Hong Konger by birth, has suddenly fallen
silent.
The attitude of Ma and his government to the two issues makes it hard to
distinguish their actions and mindsets from those of the People’s Republic of
China.
And that is not all. During the four years and three months in which Ma has been
in office, Chinese-style hoaxes and brainwashing have been going on throughout
Taiwanese society. This is the kind of “China model” that Taiwan has been
seeing.
In the political sphere, there is the government’s adherence to the so-called
“1992 consensus” and the notion that there is “one China, with each side having
its own definition.”
There is its call to “get back to the Constitution of the Republic of China” and
the idea that China and Taiwan are “two areas of one country.” In economics,
there was Ma’s pledge that he would accept a 50 percent cut in salary if the
government failed to meet his “6-3-3” election campaign pledge of achieving
annual GDP growth of 6 percent, lowering unemployment to less than 3 percent and
raising annual per capita income to US$30,000.
Let us not forget his assurances that the cross-strait Economic Cooperation
Framework Agreement signed by Taiwan and China would help Taiwan sign free-trade
agreements (FTA) with other countries, that the Trade and Investment Framework
Agreement between Taiwan and the US would open the door to an FTA, and that
Taiwan could join the Trans-Pacific Partnership within eight years.
Ma also promised that his presidency would usher in a “golden decade” for
Taiwan.
Have any of Ma’s promises turned out to be true? Do any of them match the
reality? Good as they may sound, none of these falsehoods can turn into the
truth, even if they are repeated a thousand times.
On the contrary, the ghastly reality is that there is a long list of solid
statistics to show that Taiwan’s political status and economic situation have
been getting worse.
Back in 2002, Taiwanese democracy was described by then-US secretary of state
Colin Powell as a “success story.”
This year, however, the “Taiwan story” has reached a point where Singaporean
Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam chose to quote it as a negative
example of an economy that has lost its global competitive edge.
Many civic groups in Taiwan have enthusiastically voiced their support for Hong
Kong’s anti-brainwashing campaign, but how many people are aware of the
widespread brainwashing to which the 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan are being
subjected, and how many people are doing anything to stop it?
The “China model” has run up against a roadblock in Hong Kong, but not in
Taiwan. This lack of awareness and lack of action may be the biggest danger that
Taiwan faces today.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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