Hong Kong, the outpost of free thought in China, had a protest by tens of thousands in the streets against proposed new education policies to help them ‘like’ the mainland’s authoritarian police state:
Although increasingly dependent economically on mainland China, Hong Kong, according to a recent opinion poll by Hong Kong University, now has less trust in the central government in Beijing than at any time since the 1997 handover. Separate polls show that bonds of shared identity with the rest of China have grown weaker, not stronger.
In an effort to narrow the gap, which has led to ugly outbursts of insulting rhetoric and occasional clashes, the Hong Kong government wants students to learn more about their mainland Chinese brethren. It has proposed courses to instruct pupils about China’s political system, geography and history, along with the correct etiquette for raising the national flag.
Protesters on Sunday decried this as brainwashing. Protest placards borrowed lyrics from “Another Brick in the Wall,” a song by the British rock group Pink Floyd: “We don’t need no thought control. Leave them kids alone.” A group of parents and their children waved a poster reading: “Our previous generations came here to escape the Communist Party, don’t let the next generation return to the grip of the demon.”
In Hong Kong, you can say those things about the state without being sent to a mental facility for treatment. In the rest of China …. not so much.
