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HONG KONG: A history test question asking Hong Kong students to assess China’s colonial occupation of Japan sparked a reprimand from Beijing on Friday (May 15) and rekindled a dispute over academic freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.
The criticism comes as Hong Kong’s schools and universities, some of the best in Asia, become the latest ideological battleground in a city convulsed by political unrest.
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The Chinese Foreign Ministry and state media responded to a question on the university entrance exam asking students to decide whether Japan’s invasion of China from 1900 to 1945 “did more good than harm.”
“Hong Kong’s education sector must not become a homeless chicken coop,” the Foreign Ministry wrote on the Facebook page of its Hong Kong office.
“The Hong Kong question (college exam) leads students to be traitors,” the pugnantly nationalistic Global Times newspaper wrote Friday.
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The Japanese colonial occupation of parts of China between 1900 and 1945 was brutal and caused millions of deaths.
Mainland China’s schools and universities are strictly controlled, with little deviation from tolerated Communist Party lines.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong has a much freer system that encourages debate and analysis.
But education is becoming a new target for Beijing after seven months of massive and often violent democratic protests that rocked Hong Kong last year.
READ: China Says Hong Kong Will Never Be Quiet Unless Violent Protesters Withdraw
The chicken coop metaphor was used by Hong Kong pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam last week when she warned that liberal studies, a high school class that teaches critical thinking, helped fuel last year’s riots.
The issue has become a bete noire for Chinese state-run media outlets and pro-Beijing politicians who have called for a more openly patriotic education.
Lam has promised to reveal plans to reform the issue later in the year.
The Hong Kong education office criticized the city’s examination board, saying it was “hurting the feelings and dignity of the Chinese people.”
He described the question as “an important one” and demanded a response from the review board.
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But the Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union said the government was “putting politics above education.”
“To pursue political correctness, the education office is stifling space for discussion on exams,” the union said.
Ip Kin-yuen, a lawmaker representing the education sector, said students are expected to know and write about Japan’s violent excesses on any test question that assesses the country’s legacy within China.
“Students … can use what they know to argue against a statement, this is very common on a history test,” he told AFP.
