After Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene Vivian Lau was promoted to Permanent Secretary for Food and Health (Food), Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao, two newspapers controlled by the Liaison Office, accused her of not cleaning up Lennon Walls in 2019 and also pointed out that her husband is the chief executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) and a member of the Civic Party to boot. The dailies also noted that HKCSS had opened its door to “rioters” for them to rest during the protest movement and so Lau “does not meet the standard patriotism”. Andrew Fung, Information Coordinator for the Office of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, has also written an article saying Lau’s performance was “below par”. He suggested handing over the profiles of more than 700 administrative officers to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and the Liaison Office, and that promotion of these civil servants should have the approval of the two offices. The Committee for Safeguarding National Security of Hong Kong should also review their backgrounds and past performances, according to Fung. All this is a very terrifying kind of practice adopted during the Cultural Revolution. It is about seizing government officials’ power in the name of patriotism.

Regina Ip Lau, who joined the government as an administrative officer years ago, called for stopping criticizing Lau in a “Cultural Revolution manner”. She said “many social media groups and webpages of the pro-establishment camp are mounting overwhelming attacks against her (Lau)” and that felt “as if a Cultural Revolution storm is going to sweep across Hong Kong”. Ip also said some administrative officers told her they were very worried while retired administrative officers were also voicing concerns. She said she worried that more and more administrative officers would leave the government, thus affecting its operation.

Ip made such a call either because she wants to win the heart of administrative officers or she is feeling the pain of the purge herself. When they stir up debates over patriotism and want everything to be based on the standard of patriotism, and when the discourse of staunch supporters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), patriots and blue ribbons are increasingly left-leaning and their actions increasingly outrageous so that whoever on the left can rise swiftly today, a Hong Kong version of the Cultural Revolution will begin. Now that the two pro-Beijing papers have savagely criticized Lau, CCP supporters will be even more insane, and Carrie Lam can only make minor sacrifices to safeguard major interests by perhaps letting Lau go prematurely or sending her to take care of a reservoir or something like that. Worse still, more administrative officers and high-ranking officials will be identified and accused of having children who live abroad or have foreign citizenship or of failing to eliminate “rioters”. In short, whoever deemed not patriotic enough and not meeting the standard of patriotism will be ousted.

In the early days of the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao Zedong, President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping led the movement and dispatched working groups to different departments and units, which were to act in the name of “leading the great proletarian Cultural Revolution” when in fact their task was to seize power from existing cadres and also suppress students and workers who attempted to revolt. Liu’s wife Wang Guangmei was a member of the working group that took over Tsinghua University. These people seized the power of Jiang Nanxiang, chancellor and party secretary of Tsinghua, and cast him as a capitalist roader, a reactionary academic authority and a monster. They brutally denounced him. At the same time, they severely cracked down on students who revolted. Kuai Dafu, a student leader who led the revolt, was labeled a “counter-revolutionary.” More than 50 people were implicated and two committed suicide. However, despite their all-out efforts, Liu and Deng were not able to keep things under control. The fire of the Cultural Revolution got stronger. If Mao was the one who ignited the fire, then Liu and Deng were the ones who fanned it. When the conflagration went out of control, Mao had the duo feel the fire, so that one of them had to die and the other stepped down. Liu and Deng were accomplices of the Cultural Revolution, and they eventually got hurt, too.

Today, the fire of the Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong is on. The opposition and young people are either disqualified from a certain position or arrested, or their behaviors are restricted by the National Security Law, the standard of patriotism, the oath-taking law or social gathering restrictions. They can hardly resist all that. On the other hand, the pro-establishment camp is very excited. Nonetheless, as the patriotic movement intensifies, this camp will sooner or later be criticized severely by the more fierce leftists. When the old interest groups fall, new ultra-leftist patriots will take their place. Already some people have suggested with gusto that permanent secretaries, Executive Council members and Legislative Council members and their families must live in Hong Kong on a regular basis and must not hold foreign passports or nationalities. If that is the case, People like Lam, Teresa Cheng, Tam Yiu-chung, Kevin Yeung and Regina Ip would all be replaced. More stringent left-leaning demands could be imposed on government officials, and they may not be able to hold any foreign assets and those educated abroad cannot take up government positions. Those in senior positions today may sooner or later be burned by the fire. This is real “laam chau”!

What comes around, goes around. Perhaps Ip can see that the writing is on the wall, hence her emphatic call. But the ferocious fire has started already. Can it be extinguished easily?

(Poon Siu-to, veteran journalist)

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