Amid fears of the Chinese government seeking to “brainwash” students, 50 schools today live-streamed a speech by Chinese official Li Fei, chairman of the Basic Law Committee and deputy secretary-general of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.
Many were against the idea of live-streaming the speech at schools, with pro-democracy activists taking part in a blindfold protest outside the government’s headquarters, calling on parents to ask for their children to be exempted from watching the address.
During the speech, Li said Hong Kong had a duty to implement a controversial national security law, and reiterated that Beijing had direct control over “important issues,” while Hong Kong managed “local affairs”.
However, winning the hearts and minds of Hong Kong’s youth may be a trickier task than previously imagined because of another obstacle, boredom.
kids at Lions College being very excited at the li fei talk (via RTHK) pic.twitter.com/CYsR1vTcNb
— karen cheung (@karenklcheung) November 16, 2017
Some reporters camped inside the assembly hall of Lions College in Kwai Chung noticed that some of the 120 students sitting in the hall were falling asleep during Li’s speech.
The display could suggest a lack of interest in the Beijing official’s warnings, as quoted by RTHK, that Hong Kong youngsters’ minds were being “poisoned” by the “wrong ideas” about the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution under the “one country, two systems” model.
That, or they just had a late night doing a lot of homework.
According to hk01, students started falling asleep about 10 minutes into the speech, while others started diligently filling out a worksheet handed to them before Li started talking. Students were briefed on the origin and status of the Basic Law, and were given worksheets to fill out on the subject.
For some, however, the problem was not so much boredom but the fact that the speech was delivered in Mandarin instead of Cantonese.
In a Q&A session that took place after the speech, one male student said he “understood about 70 percent”, while a female student said: “because I’m not used to listening to Mandarin, there was a lot of the speech that I could not understand.”
Lion’s College headmaster James Lam Yat Fung then raised the issue of “timespan,” or concentration span, saying that it can be difficult for younger school students to spend large amounts of time on one difficult topic in a seminar setting, adding that it might be easier for university students.
But for those students who dozed off during the speech, Coconuts HK has compiled a CliffsNotes version for you:
- Li said the failure to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law had already led to “adverse effects” in Hong Kong.
- Article 23 says Hong Kong is required to enact laws to prohibit acts of treason, sedition, and subversion against the central government, as well as to stop the theft of state secrets, and block “foreign political organizations” from conducting “political activities” in the region.
- A previous government attempt to pass such legislation led to a backlash in 2003, when some 500,000 people took to the streets in protest.
- Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam said she would only launch Article 23 legislation if the conditions were “favorable”.
- Li called talk of localism, self-determination or Hong Kong independence “heresy.”
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