To the point
Hong Kong’s Education Bureau launched a second round of professional consultations over guidelines for Chinese History as a compulsory subject in junior secondary schools, with more details on certain tumultuous times included as requested by teachers in the first round. The move is consistent with Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuetngor’s promise in her first Policy Address that Chinese History would be reinstated as a stand-alone compulsory subject in respect to popular wishes. We wholeheartedly support the government’s decision to bring Chinese History back into standard curricula of local secondary schools, because it is part of the essential knowledge every future citizen should have.
Chinese History used to be taught in secondary schools in Hong Kong under British rule but it only included ancient history and no modern history (from the 1911 Revolution to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949) or Hong Kong history. Such selected deprivation of certain knowledge in school was deemed necessary for the sake of maintaining colonial rule and therefore should have been reversed 20 years ago.
Some local residents fell for separatism so easily in recent years partly because they knew little or nothing about the history of Hong Kong and especially the period before the Opium War in 1841, as well as the history of modern China. Ignorance in this respect made them easy prey for separatist forces. As a result they made complete fools of themselves by insisting Hong Kong can survive on its own without the Chinese mainland. Some of them even convinced themselves that they are not Chinese even though they are permanent Hong Kong residents and hold Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passports that confirm they are citizens of the People’s Republic of China. If they learned Chinese History in school it might have been a different story altogether. The most important thing is that basic education must include the nation’s history, with Hong Kong’s as an integral part.
Some events in modern history, sometimes, can be too close to view objectively because the memory is still quite fresh and biased. In that case the government has a good reason to list them as voluntary topics for those who are more interested in liberal studies. Schools, however, should ensure students understand Chinese History is very important in presenting Chinese civilization in continuous progress over the past 5,000 years or so and Hong Kong’s chronological journey so far is much more than one and a half centuries under British rule. In other words, it is indispensible knowledge for anyone who thinks they genuinely love Hong Kong, because the city has always been an inalienable part of China, territorially, culturally and biologically.