China hasn’t grown on Hong Kong youth
Poll finds few identify with mainland two decades since handover
Hong Kong student activist Chau Ho-oi, born in the year the Asian financial hub returned to Chinese rule 20 years ago, recalls the sense of pride she once felt towards mainland China.
Sitting with her parents when she was 11, Chau watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics on television in awe and felt “excitement in the heart” as China’s athletes swept the board with 48 gold medals, more than any other nation.
“I thought China was great,” Chau said. “If you asked me back then if I was Chinese, I’d say yes.” Fast forward nine years, however, and the former British colony’s first post-handover generation is increasingly turning its back on the mainland.
“Now ... I don’t want to say I am Chinese,” said Chau, who was arrested during mass prodemocracy protests in 2014. “It gives me a very negative feeling. Even if you ask me 100 times, I would say the same thing.”
According to a University of Hong Kong survey released on Tuesday that polled 120 youths, only 3.1 per cent of those aged between 18 to 29 identify themselves as “broadly Chinese”. The figure stood at 31 per cent when the regular half-yearly started 20 years ago.
Attitudes were hardened, they said, by a series of shadowy manoeuvres suggesting a slow squeeze on those freedoms by Communist Party rulers in Beijing.
In 2012, a skinny 15-yearold student named Joshua Wong led tens of thousands of survey Hong Kong residents to protest against a mandatory national education curriculum they claimed would “brainwash” students by promoting Chinese patriotism. The curriculum was eventually shelved.
Two years later, the ‘Occupy’ movement, with Wong at the helm, sought to pressure Beijing to allow full democracy in the election of its leader, demands that were ultimately ignored after 79 days of street protests.
More and more youngsters are now pushing for the right to selfdetermination, and even independence, alarming Beijing.
Hong Kong’s incoming leader, Carrie Lam, speaking to China’s Xinhua state news agency, said she would seek to cultivate the concept of “I am Chinese” at nursery level.
More than 120,000 Hong Kong youths will join Chinarelated exchange programmes, some sponsored by the Hong Kong government, as part of the handover’s 20th anniversary celebrations, according to Xinhua.