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HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader on Monday (May 11) promised to overhaul the city’s education system, arguing that his liberal studies curriculum helped fuel last year’s violent protests.
Executive Director Carrie Lam described the current high school program as a “homeless chicken coop” and said her government will soon reveal its plans.
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“In terms of handling the issue of liberal studies in the future, we will definitely make things clear to the public within this year,” he told the pro-government newspaper Ta Kung Pao in an interview published on Monday (May 11).
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His remarks are likely to inflame Hong Kong people who fear that Beijing is curtailing freedoms that make the city a major international draw as political tensions once again escalate.
With the backing of Beijing, the Hong Kong government is pushing a bill banning insulting China’s national anthem, and leading pro-establishment figures are pushing for an anti-sedition law.
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The government says new legislation is needed to curb snowball support, especially among Hong Kong youth, for democracy and greater autonomy in China.
Opponents say the laws will reduce freedom of expression and will do little to heal the city’s fierce divisions.
Hong Kong has some of the best Asian schools and universities with academic freedoms never seen in mainland China.
Liberal studies was introduced in 2009 as a way to encourage critical thinking with schools that are allowed to choose how they teach it.
But it has become a bete noire for Chinese state media and pro-Beijing politicians who have called for more patriotic education.
In Monday’s interview, Lam said he felt the classes allowed teachers to pressure their political biases and that more government oversight was now needed.
READ: Hong Kong prepares for weekend protests after rare pause in violence
Hong Kong was roiled for seven months followed by often violent youth-led protests last year, with millions of people taking to the streets.
More than 8,000 people have been arrested, about 17 percent of them high school students.
The mass arrests and the coronavirus pandemic marked the beginning of a period of enforced calm.
But with the financial center successfully tackling its COVID-19 outbreak, and easing social distancing measures, small protests have erupted.
Many of Hong Kong’s protesters are young AFP / ISAAC LAWRENCE
On Sunday, riot police chased flash mob protesters through multiple shopping malls.
They then used pepper spray and nightsticks on protesters, passersby, and journalists in the Mong Kok district.
Multiple arrests were made, many of them young.
Lam has resisted calls for universal suffrage or an independent investigation into the police’s handling of protests.
In the New Year, he vowed to heal divisions that cut across Hong Kong, but his administration has offered little in the way of reconciliation or a political solution.
Arrests and prosecutions have continued apace, while Beijing’s offices in the city sparked a constitutional dispute last month by announcing greater involvement in Hong Kong’s management.
