School textbooks in Hong Kong will begin to state that that territory it was never a british colonythus leaving out of secondary education a historical account that the Chinese authorities consider contributes to the social unrest that has been experienced in recent years in Hong Kong, specifically with the pro-democracy protests that in 2019 removed a million people to the streets of Hong Kong. the city. .
At stake is Liberal Studies, a program of study that was introduced into the Hong Kong school curriculum in 2009 with the aim of helping students learn about their country’s political history and citizenship awareness, and which is now fully reformulated, receiving the name of Citizenship and Social Development and address topics including national security, identity, law, and patriotism.
According to the South China Morning Post, the Hong Kong regional government’s education department chose to review the issue after the pro-Beijing wing in the region classified the school curriculum (i.e., the history of the period when Hong Kong Kong was under British jurisdiction) as one of the main factors in the radicalization of Hong Kong’s youth during the pro-democracy protests.
Four new textbooks were published this week to accompany the Citizenship and Social Development discipline, which still need to be approved by the Ministry of Education. These manuals say that China never recognized the treaties made in the 19th century, at the end of the opium wars, through which the Chinese Empire ceded the Hong Kong region to the United Kingdom: thus Hong Kong was never formally a British colony..
Quoted by the same newspaper, the Chinese historian Chan Chi-wa explained that this discussion about the status of Hong Kong is no longer new. In 1972, the United Nations removed Hong Kong from the list of colonies due to Chinese demand. On the other hand, since the 1990s, most textbooks and textbooks had begun to remove the expression “British colony”, replacing it with a reference to the fact that the United Kingdom had exercised over the colonial power of Hong Kong until 1997the year the region was returned to Beijing.
In addition, the new manuals also adopt the vision of the Beijing government on the recent protests in Hong Kong, qualifying them as acts of insurgent groups. supported by foreign forces and in disregard of national security.
Source: Observadora
