I think these people should fight to preserve the integrity of their culture. Hong Kong is not like the rest of China and no matter who hard they push I just don’t think it ever will be.

I just hope that as this progresses over the next few years (I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this) people remember what they’re trying to get done and not turn this into yet another protest fueled by violence.

Instead what they did was give funding to a Beijing-friendly nationalist group who served up a fresh, steaming load of “scare the hell out of the population”, turn a tone-deaf ear to criticism, double-down when faced with protest, get proxies in the media to accuse protesters of essentially being the tools of unfriendly foreign powers (you know, the UK and the US, who are actually quite popular in HK). And then they caved in!

Things is, if they had really want to brain-wash people into loving the CCPotherland(TM) – and undoubtedly some of them do – they can acheive it much more easily than by introducing a compulasory class that students will likely sleep through. All they need do is continue the steady drip-drip of soft media controls, Mandarinisation, and rabble-rousing against the Japanese that we see unfolding at the moment.

Have you seen the book they wanted to use? It’s dripping with propaganda, and nary a negative thing to say about the mainland. Several pages on how multiparty systems are bad (while HK itself has a multiparty system). And nothing about blanket media censorship.

Then you have the story of a few hundred HK students being subsidized by the mainland to go visit Mao’s hometown and lay flower wreaths at his ancestral home. Seriously guys?

also, dude, wall of text. turn that ish into some paragraphs.

Of course, I understand the protests have evolved into a protest against more than simply education. That was inevitable, and good on young Hong Kongers for their opinions.

Your notion that HK people are somehow ignorant to the basics of Chinese history is frankly insulting, and way off the mark – Average Hongkongers (like the Taiwanese) are, by and large, reasonably well-educated, and far more aware of their own (and by extension Chinese) history, not to mention their continued reverence for certain traditions and customs that have all but vanished from the mainland.

The idea that Mainland Chinese people are somehow more “Chinese” than HongKongers by virtue of being taught “Chinese history” is laughable, have you ever attended a Mainland high school history class? or tried discussing pre-1949 Chinese history with an average mainlander under the age of 30?

Those who protested at the weekend took a principled stand and should be applauded, lest you forget, these are Chinese people, young Chinese people, standing up to some of the more depressing and infantilizing aspects of the current one party system.

problem solved, you’re welcome