Chinese educational authorities issued a striking guidance document to the headmasters of all non-international high, middle, and primary schools in Hong Kong on Monday. The guidance calls for propaganda sessions and competitions to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the city’s national security law on June 30. It also reminds teachers and students to report behavior that threatens national security. In China, this includes behavior that questions Communist Party orthodoxy.
Coming just one day before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, in which protesters were brutally crushed by the ruling Communist Party, the guidance underlines Beijing’s intense concern about ensuring the party’s authority. The South China Morning Post first disclosed the guidance document and intensive efforts to repress Tiananmen Square memorial events.
While most of the document is available in English, its most sensitive element providing “Key Speaking Points” for use in “morning assemblies/class teacher periods/talks in the school hall, etc.” is provided only in Mandarin. When it is translated, it’s clear why Chinese authorities weren’t too keen on English readers accessing that part of the document.
For a start, the document utterly ignores the national security law’s breach of the Sino-British joint declaration. That binding treaty commits China to respecting Hong Kong’s democratic character until at least 2047. Of course, the national security law and an associated purge of pro-democracy legislators, media outlets, and candidates have shredded the city’s democratic character. As has China’s threat that Hong Kong activists abroad will be targeted for kidnap. Chinese officials deny this reality, continuing to insist absurdly that Hong Kong’s political system remains democratic.
The document explains that the law’s “purpose is to protect … property, freedom and rights, while not affecting our daily foreign communications and life.” This will “create opportunities for Hong Kong to be governed and revitalized.” But, the guidance adds, “If we discover some situations that endanger the country, we can report it to relevant units … please report to the reporting hotline and fulfill your citizen responsibilities. As the saying goes: National security is everyone’s responsibility.”
Remember, this is guidance for schools that teach children aged 6 to 18. It is not for college students, government employees, or adults. And the flippancy with which the guidance calls on students and teachers to report on their contemporaries is telling. It shows just how anathema the condition of human freedom is to the Chinese Communist Party.
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In 2024, freedom in China exists only so far as Chinese President Xi Jinping deems it to exist in any one moment. And only ever to the degree that freedom comports with party interests. Ludicrously, neither Xi nor his Hong Kong authorities seem to recognize that their false condition of freedom is a major reason why Hong Kong has lost much of its appeal to international businesses and investors. They do not want to live under Xi’s paranoid and ever-watchful eye. Put simply, they do not share the guidance’s assertion that the national security law will allow them to “live and work in peace and contentment, each showing his or her strengths.”
The best utilization of our strengths is, after all, dependent on our freedom to think, speak, and act on matters of public import. And as this document inadvertently but blatantly establishes, that freedom no longer exists in Hong Kong.