In early December, the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union conducted an online poll, which found that 91 percent of school teachers who teach liberal studies disagreed with Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s claim that the teaching of liberal studies has deviated from the subject’s objective, and 93 percent disagreed that the subject had radicalized students to break the law in protests last year. Under government plans to reform liberal studies, the subject will be given a new name. The changes are widely regarded as a form of “political murder” of the subject. Are liberal studies teachers who are on the front line of the education sector distorting the truth? Or is the chief executive, who is in a superior position and whose words are the law, burying her head in the sand?

According to the SAR government, the liberal studies subject needs an overhaul because it lacks a curriculum guideline and the teaching involves many “immature topics”. What sort of guideline is needed for liberal studies in the future? What kind of topics are considered mature? Having “deviated from the objective”, with what should liberal studies be “assimilated”? The authorities are of the view that liberal studies should be reinstated as a platform for students to learn about “the development of our nation, the Constitution, the Basic Law, the rule of law and so forth”, so as to “develop in them a sense of identity, belonging and responsibility towards the nation”. According to Priscilla Leung of the pro-establishment camp, it is necessary to “let students have the right values”. If liberal studies must cover things about China, what one should reflect on is whether there is already a public consensus on mainland China’s values, and the understanding of the Constitution and the Basic Law. Do all these constitute a “mature topic”?

The “core socialist values” promoted by Beijing, written in 24 Chinese characters, include “democracy”, “harmony”, “freedom” and the “rule of law”. But in China, democracy does not mean people have votes, and there is only the rubber stamp parliament that is the National People’s Congress; having harmony does not mean voices of dissent are tolerated and many dissidents actually get devoured by the authorities’ measures to “stabilize” society; freedom does not cover the freedom to run independent newspapers and form parties and associations or the freedom for foreign websites to operate in the mainland; the rule of law is under the leadership of the party and there is no judicial independence as only the central government has the say. In the future, Hong Kong’s liberal studies curriculum will include student trips to mainland China. As the Education Bureau says, the idea is to “let students learn about our nation’s situation and development firsthand”. But if students come across situations where the above core values contradict the truth and they then bring up controversial issues on which there is no public consensus, how should teachers respond? Can Priscilla Leung then come up with some “mature topics”? If not, how can the “right values” be established?

Then there is the Constitution. I previously wrote an article entitled “When the Constitution is not applied to the mainland, how can it be applied to Hong Kong?”. In the article, I pointed out that China’s Constitution is just a sand castle in mainland China. Over the years, it has still not been put into practice in the mainland’s judicial system. Court cases involving the Constitution are very rare. Wang Zhenmin, former legal chief of the Liaison Office and professor at the Law School of Tsinghua University, called this “a wonder in the judicial history of China and other countries”. In an article he penned more than 20 years ago, Wang said: “If the Constitution cannot make its way into judicial proceedings, it means that when it comes to the fundamental issue that is of paramount importance to our country, we still fail to comply with the law and are in a state of disorder. Things can only be resolved by unlawful means.” What Professor Wang did not state clearly was that the Constitution cannot make its way into judicial proceedings because the question of whether it is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the law that has greater power cannot be resolved. This is a highly controversial issue, and with the chief executive taking charge of constitution education in Hong Kong in the future, one wonders how she will address the issue.

Then let’s turn to the Basic Law. According to Wikipedia: “Constitution in the modern sense is a contract between citizens and their country” and is “the highest law of a jurisdiction”. Is the Basic Law, also known as Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, a contract? It is according to former secretary for justice Elsie Leung, former Legislative Council (LegCo) president Jasper Tsang and current LegCo member Regina Ip. Apparently, these pro-establishment figures are all caught in an “immature topic”. According to the CCP, the Basic Law is an empowered law. Whatever powers Hong Kong has are granted by the Central Government. If the Basic Law is an empowered law, it is a law that takes order from high and is not a contract. In other words, there is no such thing as the parties to the contract enjoying equal status before the law. According to Professor Albert Chen Hung-yee, the National Security Law in Hong Kong is a new social contract proposed by the Central Government. But his former teacher Jerome Cohen, a law professor, refuted this claim, saying that the security law is nothing but a “social order” imposed by the Central Government. In a society with the rule of law and where the sense of contract runs deep, inculcating in all Hong Kongers, secondary students included, an “awareness of authorization” is bound to cause endless disputes.

In a civilized society, importance is attached to the questions raised in a liberal studies curriculum. In a totalitarian society, the answers to those questions must be set first and all “immature” topics that threaten the totalitarian rule have to be eliminated. In such a society, the truth is an unbearable burden. Topics related to the right values, the Constitution and the Basic Law will never be “mature” enough. The death of liberal studies is comparable to the death of judicial independence in the mainland, the death of the media and the death of education autonomy. The subject is just another funerary item in a totalitarian society.

(Sham Chau, political commentator)

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