HK entrepreneur Annie Wu Suk-ching, named recently as one of China’s ‘most inspiring people of the year’, has taken the city’s youths to task, warning that their sense of national identity and pride will be forever lost unless they’re bred and educated to love the country. Luo Weiteng reports from Hong Kong.
Annie Wu Suk-ching outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 1979. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Patriotism is deep in her blood and entails a “life-long romance” for legendary Hong Kong businesswoman Annie Wu Suk-ching.
A turbulent year has gone by, tough enough for her to pluck up the courage and stand up for what she cherishes and believes in. She’s akin to a “romantic heroine” fighting a lone battle for the future of a city she’s long been associated with.
As young radicals rampaged through Hong Kong streets, shouting empty slogans, smashing up businesses, uprooting the livelihoods of innocent residents, undermining public order in the name of freedom and democracy, and silencing anyone who stood in their way, Wu put her foot down and never gave up.
It’s been 23 years since the handover. However, there has been an appalling lack of use of the education system to educate students and teachers at primary and secondary schools to respect our country
Annie Wu Suk-ching, honorary chairman of Beijing Air Catering Co and a lifetime honorary board member of the World Trade Centers Association
She was at the forefront of a chorus of citywide denunciations of the violence, thrusting her into the eye of the storm with her outspokenness. It drew the wrath of the radicals who went on to target her family businesses, vandalizing and firebombing shops and premises that bear her family’s trademark. “Outsiders” claiming to be politically neutral asked why “old-timers” like Wu can’t just turn a blind eye to this, and hold her tongue just like the silent majority.
At 71, Wu represents a fading generation that has gone through both colonial rule under the British and reunification with the motherland. Her life trajectory, intertwined with one of the most magnificent episodes of Chinese history, also makes her a minority in Hong Kong who have testified to the motherland’s dramatic transformation in the past four decades.
Perhaps, this has made it unendurable for her to stay aloof from what’s going on.
“It’s been 23 years since the handover. However, there has been an appalling lack of use of the education system to educate students and teachers at primary and secondary schools to respect our country. As a result, Hong Kong people have never left the mindset of living in the colonial period,” Wu tells China Daily in an exclusive interview.
“Most of them expected the central government to allow Hong Kong to operate the way it was before July 1, 1997. Most of them were reluctant to be fully integrated with the Chinese mainland or the mainland system. They feel rather uncomfortable about being part of the country and are overly sensitive about any comment from the central government.
“Hong Kong’s chief executives have failed to help mitigate the suspicion and wariness. Therefore, 23 years have passed, young people have been easily utilized as rioters to challenge the authority of the central government,” laments Wu.
It isn’t the first time that Wu, the honorary chairman of Beijing Air Catering Co — the nation’s first-ever joint venture — has criticized shortcomings in the city’s education system. She once said the Education Bureau is “out of touch”, accusing its officials of failing to promote national pride in Hong Kong schools and a national identity among young people.
“Today’s Hong Kong youngsters have not been nurtured with patriotism. They only identify themselves as Hong Kong people rather than Chinese nationals. This is the general understanding of those aged between 12 and 30.”
The local education system should be blamed for this anomaly — a system that emphasizes subjects like English, Chinese and mathematics, with scant attention paid to Chinese history, says Wu. This is in stark contrast with the mainland, as well as the curriculum Hong Kong had before the handover.
She recalls that during her school days in Hong Kong, Chinese history used to be a compulsory subject at senior secondary level. But since the handover, Chinese history has been pushed into the back seat and incorporated into liberal studies.
Wu with the then-general manager of Beidaihe Summer Resort (center) in 1979. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Problems with education
“Compared with my generation and even their parents’ generation, Hong Kong teenagers have yet to be taught enough about how everything was years before and what’s going on today in our motherland,” Wu says in a previous interview with China Daily.
“With a vague understanding of the country’s past and present, how could we expect young people in Hong Kong, who may face an identity crisis for years to come, play a part in the nation’s future?”
Fully devoted to the cause of education, Wu founded the Chinese Foundation Secondary School in 2000 as a “platform and base” to enable her to act on her educational ideas. Since the social unrest erupted last year, she has taken a tough stance against any plan to boycott classes. At a meeting with students in September, Wu showed films highlighting close ties between the mainland and Hong Kong, making clear she would never tolerate anyone engaging in disruptive political activities in schools, a warning that also earned her a sharp rebuke from critics.
Wu believes it cries out for “an overall shakeup of the education system” to make Hong Kong’s young people more attached to the mainland, help cultivate a national identity and teach them to respect their motherland. Such an initiative must be handled by the chief executive, with the full endorsement and unswerving support of the central government.
Wu in discussions about catering services of the soon-to-be-founded Beijing Air Catering Co at Beidaihe Summer Resort in 1979. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
“Without proper courses in citizenship, and a better understanding of ‘one country’ before ‘two systems’, Hong Kong youngsters will become brainwashed by Western ideology of human rights and democracy, making them susceptible to anti-China and anti-HKSAR sentiments,” she says.
Hong Kong’s education issue has never been immune to crises since 2012, when the SAR government was forced to scrap introducing national education into the primary and secondary school curriculum to nurture patriotism. The move was demonized as a failed attempt to push propaganda from the mainland — a row that propelled student activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung to prominence at the age of 15.
In May, a history exam for the city’s college entrance examination posed the question of whether Japan did “more good than harm to China” between 1900 and 1945. It stirred up a hornet’s nest, offering a glimpse of the glaring problems deeply rooted in the local education system.
It was not the only issue. Hong Kong’s education problems had already come under the spotlight after a video circulated on social media in April showing a teacher telling a class that the First Opium War was the result of Britain’s attempt to ban opium smoking in China. In fact, historians concur that the war began in 1839 after the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) sought to end the British opium trade in the country. After the war ended in 1842, China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain, and the British opium trade continued.
With local education having failed to foster cohesion between Hong Kong and the mainland, and cultivate the next generation as patriots for decades, Hong Kong’s youths remain a stranger to simple and pure love for their homeland, as well as a sense of duty and a willingness to serve the country that had essentially shaped Wu’s generation.
Annie Wu keeps herself posted with an edition of China Daily at the library of the Chinese Foundation Secondary School in Siu Sai Wan that she founded in 2000. (ROY LIU / CHINA DAILY)
Offering firm support
Those hardcore beliefs drove Wu to head north in 1978 as being among the first batch of pioneering Hong Kong entrepreneurs to embrace a daring, near iconoclastic spirit of change when the mainland rolled out its historic campaign for economic prowess.
Her sheer attachment and devotion to the country motivated her to take a hard road at setting up Beijing Air Catering Co and playing a zestful role in four decades of reform and opening-up.
As a determined supporter, keen contributor and an active participant in the mega story of building up a modern China based on trust and mutual respect, Wu, born and bred in Hong Kong, knows very well the hefty price Hong Kong paid for the violence in the city that caused chaotic situations.
In November, she voiced concern over the gloomier economic outlook ahead, warning that the protest-hit local economy will be down for at least three years.
When the coronavirus pandemic reared its head across the globe as the Year of the Rat got off, Hong Kong’s battered economy, already reeling from festering protests and escalating Sino-US trade tensions, braced itself for an even more cavernous recession.
“The euphoria over the influx of mainland tourists to Hong Kong is over,” Wu says. The SAR’s once red hot retail and hospitality industries, which have been on a tear under the Individual Visit Scheme that opened Hong Kong to mainland visitors not with tour groups, will be in for a bumpy ride toward a slower-than-usual recovery, she says.
Although local retailers and hoteliers look to replicate the recovery story back in 2003 when the Individual Visit Scheme helped them ride out the SARS backlash and stage a dramatic comeback, Wu believes the ongoing crisis will be “more detrimental” to Hong Kong’s recovery.
Wu says the only approach that may offer a glint of hope is to encourage local residents to go sightseeing and visit heritage sites in town. In May, a coalition co-sponsored by 1,545 representatives of various sectors of the Hong Kong community was mandated to put the city back on track. As a founding member of the Hong Kong Coalition, Wu feels it’s now the “moment for all people who love Hong Kong to join forces to contribute to the city’s enhancement and economic progress”.
As always, Wu has the future of Hong Kong’s young people foremost in mind. Although she expressed her “deep disappointment” in hard-hitting interviews with CGTN and Global Times, saying the city has “lost two generations of its young people”, she can’t really give up on them and leave them abandoned to their fate.
“We’ve to focus on ways and means to give them more and better opportunities as they need jobs so that they can be economically independent and become mature citizens of Hong Kong,” she argues.
Wu’s full of applause for the National Security Law for Hong Kong, which was unanimously passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee — the nation’s top legislature — on June 30 and immediately promulgated in time to mark the 23rd anniversary of the handover. She calls it a “stabilizing factor” for re-creating law and order in Hong Kong that underpins the central government’s unwavering support for the SAR and its chief executive.
“In fact, all those I’ve spoken to ardently believe that the enactment of the legislation heralds beginning of the city’s return to normality,” says Wu, who also serves as a lifetime honorary board member of the New York-based World Trade Centers Association that works to link up the global community to stimulate trade and investment opportunities.
Wu was recently named one of China’s “most inspiring people of the year” as the sole Hong Kong nominee for the honor. “I just fulfilled my duty, a duty that every Chinese should have to the country — to speak the truth and stand up for justice”, she says, exhibiting traces of her humbleness in life.
In a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council in September, Wu harshly criticized the violent radicals in Hong Kong, reiterating that “the views of a small group of extremist protesters do not represent the views of all Hong Kong people”.
Despite the brickbats and insults hurled at her, she vows to go on fighting for her city and nation in her own style — like a “romantic heroine”.
Contact the writer at sophia@chinadailyhk.com
