Briefings - 344. page

The Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development recently launched a campaign to stop the “worship of foreign things” and to require the locals to change the name of any location or any building that contained a “foreign name.” It has expanded across the mainland in regions including Guangdong, Ningxia, Shanxi, Zhejiang, Shandong, Sichuan, Fujian, Hainan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia. In Hainan province, it listed 84 areas that required a name change. One of those was the Vienna Hotel, which was named after the capital of Austria. The Vienna Hotels company raised an objection stating that the name was legally authorized in China. The hotel chain has 15 Hotels in Hainan and 2,500 hotels in the mainland. In Zhejiang province, an apartment complex named “Manhattan” and one called “Europe” were ordered to change their names. Moreover, in Fujian province, the government even tried to change the names of the historic mountains because the names sounded “odd.” A number of overseas Chinese media reported the news, calling it a “waste of money and resources” and stated that the campaign received wide criticism and resistance. Netizens in China also posted comments on the Internet. One posting said, “What about Alibaba? Isn’t this worshiping Arabian culture?” Others wrote “the cultural revolution is back!” … “If a foreign name needs to be changed, how about changing Marxism, Communism and the Communist Party because all of them came from overseas.”

Source: Epoch Times, June 23, 2019
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/6/23/n11341557.htm

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a regular press conference on June 17. The mainland Chinese media has kept silent about the Hong Kong protests, but foreign media, Taiwan’s media, and Hong Kong’s media questioned the spokesperson at least five times. With regard to the fact that more than two million Hong Kong people took to the streets on June 16 asking chief executive Carrier Lam to step down, spokesperson Lu Kang said, “The Central Government gives full recognition to and will continue its firm support for the Chief Executive and the SAR government in carrying out their work according to law.”

Those at the June 16 parade also demanded an investigation into the responsibility of the Hong Kong police who fired guns and tear gas at the June 12 protesters and also that they retract the statement that the June 12 protest was a “riot.” The Central News Agency asked whether China still believes that the June 12 protest was violent or whether its position has changed. Lu said “the Central Government strongly condemns the violent behavior. We firmly support the police in lawfully punishing the perpetrators and safeguarding the rule of law, the social order, and the security in Hong Kong. You asked whether our position has changed. I can assure you that it hasn’t changed, not even a little bit.”

Source: Central News Agency, June 17, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201906170223.aspx

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

In the run-up to 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the party launched an education campaign called, “Remain true to our original aspirations and keep our mission firmly in mind.” The Central Publicity Department called on more than 500 journalists to follow the “Long March” of the Red Army and write news reports about the journey. During the speech made at the opening ceremony, the chief of the Publicity Department said that the journalists need to “make a long journey” and profoundly reveal “how red power came into being, how the new China was built,” and “to echo strongly the theme song (of the Party).”

The Central Political Bureau decided in May that from June onwards, the whole party would carry out the theme education of “Remain true to our original aspirations and keep our mission firmly in mind” in two phases. On May 20, Xi Jinping inspected the Chinese Communist Party’s Red Army Long March gathering place in Jiangxi Yudu. The move was described at the time as “exploring the source of the [party’s] original heart.” Reports indicated that there would be 500 journalists from 30 news media in the mainland who would participate in the campaign. Several opening ceremonies were held in different locations including Yudu and Ruijing of Jiangxi province and Changdi and Nihua of Fujian province, which are considered to be the “red regions,” full of “red memories.”

The “Long March” promoted in the history of the CCP took place in the early 1930s. The Nationalist Government successfully chased the Communist Party forces in the southwestern part of the Yangtze River and the western part of Fujian Province and forced them to flee from their base to Yan’an in northern Shaanxi. It lasted for several years. The Communist Party called it the “25,000 mile long march.”

Source: Central News Agency, June 11, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201906110196.aspx