Hong Kong’s No 2 official has likened the government’s approach to patriotic education to dating a girl, saying it was difficult to get someone to love their own country without first getting to understand it well.
Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan Kwok-ki told a radio show on Saturday that cultural exhibitions and markets selling mainland Chinese products were among activities organised to help Hongkongers better understand the nation.
Chan, who heads the city’s Basic Law promotion committee, also revealed that the city’s 18 district councils had been instructed to organise national day celebrations that incorporated patriotic education.
“We have agreed to take a softer approach to conduct patriotic education as it cannot be a hard sell,” he said.
“The order of things is that you have to get to know the country before identifying with it, eventually being able to love and safeguard it.
“To put it simply, for a young man to fall in love, he has to first get to know his girlfriend – how can you fall in love without knowing her?
“After he gets to know her, he will find that she is great, then he will marry her, and will surely love her and protect everything about her.”
Chan added that a trend towards Hongkongers spending across the border with mainland China had hit the city’s economy.
But he said it was also “a manifestation of identifying” with the country as young people who had once despised mainland travel permits were now prepared to see for themselves.
“To come from the heart, you must see it for yourself,” Chan added.
“Once you step onto the mainland, you will feel its achievements in the past decades which have led to our people’s rapid improvement in living standards.
“I think that is the most important thing in determining whether a government is good or not.”
Chan also defended Hong Kong’s human rights record and disputed some diplomats’ concerns over how the city’s two national security laws, both passed in the past four years, had undermined the business environment.
“It’s very strange that in 2019, there were petrol bombs and fights everywhere,” Chan said.
“Why didn’t you come out and say that affected your business?
“Now, in such peaceful and prosperous times, you say your business is affected? I really do not understand.”
Chan added that he had also appealed to diplomats posted to Hong Kong to relay the city government’s views to their homelands and paint a fair picture of conditions on the ground.
