National Security Education will be a big push factor for Hong Kong emigres to Britain

With a jarring upbeat jingle and cute animated owl, the Hong Kong government rolled out its new National Security curriculum.  ‘Let’s learn about National Security,’ the owl earnestly tells the primary school’s children. A new era has begun.  

On Thursday, the Hong Kong government announced major curricula reforms. Children as young as six will learn about the National Security Law crimes and schools will be instructed to inform on students who chant political slogans. National Security will run through the entire curricula. Biology classes will learn about the ‘great success’ of the Chinese government response to covid-19, geography classes will affirm China’s claims in the South China Sea.

While the fact that more than ten thousand people face protest-related charges naturally garners the headlines, the transformation of the curriculum in Hong Kong appears to be one of the biggest push factors likely to encourage Hong Kongers to avail themselves of the British government’s British National (Overseas) visa.

One Hong Konger who has already relocated to the United Kingdom said that her family’s and friend’s whatsapp groups are full of concerns about ‘white terror’ or ‘cultural revolution’. The people who are considering leaving in her network ‘are people with families’:

‘The reason why they want to leave Hong Kong is because of the children, the future of the children. Most of them are aware that national education will be coming. The national security education announcement will be a big push factor.’

My friend was one of many thousands of Hong Kongers who demonstrated against similar proposed curricula reforms in 2012. These protests, where a teenage Joshua Wong cut his teeth as an activist, were the last time that the Hong Kong government backed down following popular protests. Today the parents of primary school children express the fear that their kids are ‘easy targets’ for brainwashing, and that this may push them to leave.

The strength of feeling about the issue runs deep in Hong Kong where millions are descended from refugees from the worst excesses of the rule of Chairman Mao – the campaigns of the early 1950s, the Great Leap Forward famine, and the cultural revolution. It is a matter of great embarrassment to the People’s Republic of China that a large portion of Hong Kong’s population sought refuge with the colonial power. This historical legacy is one of the great sources of distrust among the Hong Kong public about the authorities in Beijing.

My friend, who has young children herself, underlined the alarm among her peers that ‘history was repeating itself.’

‘We heard about the cultural revolution in our childhood: how it was.  The words White Terror and Cultural Revolution are increasingly frequent in online forums.’

The Hong Kong government’s rhetoric says that the ‘National Security Law will only target a small minority’ of extreme voices. However, since the National Security Law has passed, we have witnessed the dismantling of democracy through the mass disqualification and arrest of legislative councillors, an assault on the free press via the arrest of Jimmy Lai, and judges under increasing pressure. Yet perhaps even more foreboding for the average middle-class, liberally minded Hong Konger are the oaths of allegiance which are now being mandated for every civil servant and the signals that the Great Firewall which governs internet censorship in the mainland will be set firmly in place in Hong Kong.

Political scientists once described Hong Kong as a ‘hybrid’ city under a form of liberal authoritarianism. Each step down the path only confirms the impression that the word liberal no longer applies.

If trends continue as they are, white terror in Hong Kong is likely to be a major push factor for those considering whether to avail themselves of the British government’s offer.

Home Office figures estimate that around 300,000 Hong Kongers may move to the United Kingdom in the next five years. But this number is contingent on events in Hong Kong: the tighter the screws turn, the larger the numbers of young families who will decide that they would prefer that history does not repeat itself. The British government must stand ready to welcome them. If the Chinese government wants to avoid another Cultural Revolution-style mass exodus, they would do well to reconsider their course. 

Johnny Patterson is the Policy Director of Hong Kong Watch