In September this year when schools reopen for the autumn semester, Chinese elementary and middle schools will start using newly compiled textbooks for subjects like language and history, which not only further incorporate “Xi Jinping Thought” but also introduce content on the Sino-Indian War and the Sino-Vietnamese War. In Hong Kong, junior high school textbooks are including “Xi Thought” for the first time, drawing attention. Experts point out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always aimed to brainwash Hong Kong people through education, and this is just the beginning.
Chinese state television reported that the newly revised moral and legal education, language, and history textbooks will first be used in the starting grades and will cover all grades of compulsory education within three years. Officially, this revision is said to comprehensively present the main content of “Xi Jinping Thought,” including Xi Jinping’s so-called “thought” on economy, rule of law, culture, ecological civilization, strengthening the military, and diplomacy.
In the history textbooks, content on the Sino-Indian War and the Sino-Vietnamese War has been added; Chinese Communist Party’s “red classic passages” have been included in the language curriculum.
Yan Jianfa, former professor at Taiwan’s Jen-How Institute of Technology Department of Business Administration and Director of the International Cooperation Office, told Epoch Times that since 2021, China’s economy has been continuously declining, and the CCP has shifted its legitimacy focus to emphasizing “security and stability” rather than development. Xi Jinping is now aiming to control people’s minds, starting with education.
Yan Jianfa believes that the CCP’s textbooks touching on Vietnam, India’s border issues, and the international situation of the China-US confrontation mean that the CCP needs to defend both externally and internally. It needs to start with education internally.
The CCP Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the “Patriotic Education Law” in October last year, which came into effect this year. It includes specific “Hong Kong and Macao clauses,” requiring these regions to engage in this type of “education.”
According to a report by Hong Kong’s Ming Pao, starting from this September’s new school term, junior high schools across Hong Kong will introduce the subject of “Citizenship, Economics, and Social Sciences,” incorporating “patriotic education” and “Xi Thought” for the first time.
Historian based in Australia, Li Yuanhua, told Epoch Times that what the CCP has always wanted is to brainwash Hong Kong people through education. These contents have been implemented on the Chinese mainland for many years, and the CCP views it as effective. Now, these contents are being used in Hong Kong textbooks to cultivate obedient subjects serving authoritarian rule; he believes that such content will continue to increase in Hong Kong textbooks in the future.
The CCP officially emphasizes the “integration of ideological and political education” on the mainland to cultivate individuals that “make the party feel at ease.”
Li Yuanhua said that the CCP will certainly do the same in Hong Kong, but if done too aggressively, there may be a backlash. Therefore, the CCP will gradually erode, aiming for the same “high degree of unity” as in the mainland. “Perhaps in the future, they will even have them use People’s Education Press textbooks in Hong Kong, with no need to compile textbooks anymore. Or perhaps they will switch to simplified characters instead of traditional characters. Sooner or later, this step will come because they treat Tibet and Xinjiang the same way; they want Hong Kong to fully accept their party culture.”
The turning of Hong Kong textbooks to CCP-influenced ones comes in the backdrop of the 2019 “Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement” and the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong by the CCP in 2020. This was followed by a massive wave of emigration, with tens of thousands of mainland Chinese individuals moving to Hong Kong through various means.
Yan Jianfa stated that the CCP has always believed that Hong Kong is vulnerable to infiltration by so-called foreign forces to subvert it. But now that the “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong no longer exists, Hongkongers leaving allows mainlanders to come in and fill the gap, which is very evident. This is what is called “keeping Hong Kong but not the people.”
Li Yuanhua believes that Hongkongers leaving is actually what the CCP wants. It wants to retain those it deems loyal to the party. Those leaving are individuals who adhere to the idea of freedom or strongly despise the CCP. “In fact, it’s not whether you want to keep people or not, it’s that everyone is leaving voluntarily.”
Regarding the CCP using textbooks to brainwash in Hong Kong, Yan Jianfa believes that the CCP’s goal of Sinicizing Hong Kong was actually achieved a long time ago.
Li Yuanhua, on the other hand, said that what the CCP wants is for Hong Kong to completely Sinicize. The current push with educational content is just the CCP’s initial steps, and it has not yet reached its final goal.