Blog 2: Plan for Change in Schools Stirs Protest in Hong Kong

            Compared to the whole of China, Hong Kong doesn’t look too formidable on a map. Yet, Hong Kong is significantly different from the mainland. Instead of the Chinese Communist Party, Hong Kong practices a multiparty democracy. Not only are its politics strikingly different, but Hong Kong’s main language is Cantonese, which is entirely different from China’s Mandarin. It doesn’t help, either, that public sentiment towards the government in Beijing is at its highest state of dissatisfaction since it was handed back over from Britain to China in 1997.

            Recently, citizens of Hong Kong have protested against contemporary Chinese history classes being taught in their city, which essentially is a creation of a mandatory national education. The classes are discretionarily taught in public schools now, but will be mandatory by 2015.

            Although Hong Kong is very different from the mainland, citizens of Hong Kong are still citizens of China as well. I cannot help but compare the similarities of Hong Kong and China to the United States of America and any one of its very diverse states. Although each state in America has its own accent, culture, history, traditions, and a number of other things, all fifty of them unite together to form the United States. It’s difficult to imagine what it would be like today if the South had been successful in succeeding from the Union, but I can fairly imagine that it would be more like Hong Kong’s situation with China. It may even have been very similar to what it had been like before the Civil War began, with the South’s great opposition and resistance to the Union. It’s very unlikely that Hong Kong would try to seceed from China, because it doesn’t have its own foreign relations or military defense. Yet, it would still be interesting to see what Hong Kong would actually succeed for, because it has many reasons to want to succeed, including freedom.

9/4/12 11:22 PM
"Plan for Change in Schools Stirs Protest in Hong Kong"