On June 12, a video of a speech given by a Chinese military general started to circulate on the internet. The video was taken during the 12th National Outstanding Teachers’ Development Forum that was held in Chengdu from November 5th to 7th, 2018. Xu Yan, a military general, professor at the National Defense University, and a “star Internet professor” wore his military uniform while giving the talk. The topic was the Battles of the South China Sea. In his speech, Xu used class analysis to explore the nature of the Hong Kong’s social structure, claiming that the people in Hong Kong are “the worst.”
When talking about the Hong Kong issue, Xu said that, when the Chinese Communists entered Hong Kong in 1997, he and the leaders of the Hong Kong troops participated in a study of the social situation in Hong Kong. He said that “the social foundation of Hong Kong was the worst in China. It is even worse than Taiwan. There are not many people in Taiwan who really oppose the Communist Party. Eighty percent of the local residents in Taiwan do not care about the Communist Party and 20 percent of them were there because of the national civil war.” According to Xu, there are three types of Hong Kong residents. The first type is the original resident who received a Hong Kong and British education. They therefore do not have much hatred for the mainland. The second type consists of people who escaped to Hong Kong from 1949 to 1950 after the CCP launched different movements on the mainland. This group is “the worst” and has an “implacable hatred” for the Communist Party. The last group are the refugees who fled to Hong Kong during the Great Famine of 1958 to 1961 and don’t have a good impression of the Communist Party. Xu claimed that it was a big mistake that the CCP did not implement “decolonization” work in Hong Kong. [Editor’s note: In this instance the Chinese word “decolonization” means “to enable the party to exert control of the political, educational, social, and economic systems so as to correct the concepts, thinking, and value systems left over from British colonial rule.] It was this problem in the Hong Kong students’ education that caused them to “riot.” “Their teaching materials should have been changed to the ones that the mainland uses.” Xu pointed out one big lesson. It is that, in Hong Kong, there was an over-emphasis on the “two systems,” but not enough emphasize on “one country.” He also said that, after the new chief executive, Carrie Lam, took office, two things went well. The first is that the three student leaders from occupy central were put in prison. The second is that, starting this year, the textbooks in Hong Kong will be changed to the ones that the CCP uses in the mainland.
According to Epoch Times, the “decolonization” that Xu mentioned in his speech has been the consensus of the Chinese authorities for some time. In 2016, Jin Yinan, Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University made similar remarks about a series of incidents in Hong Kong. Jin spoke about the key issues in Hong Kong. He said that these incidents occurred because “the work of ‘decolonization’ has not been done well.” The protests on the streets of Hong Kong are simply a “disgrace” to the CCP. He also said that the Hong Kong people who fled the CCP’s tyranny in 1997, when Hong Kong’s sovereignty was handed over, had committed an “evil deed.” Qiang Shigong, a Professor at Peking University Law School, said in 2015 that Hong Kong education has not yet been “decolonized.” For example, middle school education lacks modern Chinese history. He blamed this on the fact that there was no “decolonizing” work being done among Hong Kong’s political and cultural elite classes. In September 2015, at the forum on “Hong Kong’s Position and Role in the National Development Strategy” hosted by hundreds of Hong Kong political and business leaders, including the Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, Chen Zuoqi, President of the National Hong Kong and Macao Research Association also claimed that Hong Kong had not been “decolonized.”
Source: Epoch Times, June 13, 2019
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/6/13/n11320777.htm